Page:Magdalen by J S Machar.pdf/135

 Everything was silent. She saw only the red shining trunks of the old firs.

She wanted to walk on, but she suddenly stopped in terror,—it was strange, she did not cry out,—before her, on a large grey plaid under a tree, lay a man, looking calmly and steadily at her. His large dark-brown eyes looked askance, as those of a man in the habit of reading falsehoods. There seemed to be a fire in those dark, fallen sockets, and the green shade of the tree gave a ghost-like appearance to the lean, waxen face, which was covered with a beard of sparse brown hair. His pale lips were closed. Thus did that strange man look at her without a word, without a movement.

In terror, and spellbound by his glance, Lucy asked him (she could think of nothing else then): “Are you a picnicker, too?”

The stranger answered softly: “Yes,”

“Of our party?”

“Of yours? Which is that?”

“The burgomistress’”