At the sound of the eager, imploring voice, the rider kept his whip poised in the air, then let his arm fall, and dragging rather than guiding the horse, forced it near the hedge.

"Who is it? Who are you?" he demanded, angrily. "What the——"

Then he stopped suddenly, and stared speechlessly, motionless, and transfixed—horse and rider, as it were, turned to stone.

Tall and graceful, with that grace which belongs to the girlhood which stands on the threshold of womanhood, with her exquisite face fixed in an expression of mingled fear and pity, and a shyness struggling with maidenly pride, she made a picture which was lovely enough to satisfy the requirements of the most[14] critical and artistic mind—a picture which he who looked upon it carried with him till the day he died.

[14]

For a moment he sat motionless, and as he sat the moon fell full upon his face, and Stella saw the face of the portrait whose eyes she had but a few minutes since hidden from her sight.

A lifetime of emotion may pass in a minute; a life's fate hangs upon the balance of a stroke of time. It was only for a moment that they looked into each other's eyes in silence, but that moment meant so much to each of them! It was the horse that broke the spell by attempting to rise again. With a slight movement of the hand Leycester Wyndward forced him down, and then slid from the saddle and stood at Stella's feet, hat in hand.

Even then he paused as if afraid, lest a word should cause the vision to vanish into thin air; but at last he opened his lips.

"I beg your pardon."

That was all. Four words only, and words that one hears daily; words that have almost lost their import from too familiar commonplace, and yet, as he said them, they sounded so entirely, so earnestly, so intensely significant and full of meaning that all the commonplace drifted from them, and they conveyed to the listener's ear a real and eager prayer for forgiveness; so real and earnest that to have passed them by with the conventional smile and bow would have been an insult, and impossible.

But it was not only the words and the tone, but the voice that thrilled through Stella's soul, and seemed to wake an echoing chord. The picture which had so awed her had been dumb and voiceless; but now it seemed as if it had spoken even as it had smiled, and 

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