It sounded curiously in harmony with the tempest that raged about him.
For himself, he appeared to regard the storm with indifference--almost to welcome it, for more than once Sara saw him raise his head as though he were glad to feel the wind and rain beating against his face.
She drew back a little into the shadows of the summer-house, hoping he might turn aside without observing her, since, from all accounts, Garth Trent was hardly the type of man to welcome a trespasser upon his property.
But he came straight on towards her, and an instant later she knew that her presence was discovered, for he stopped abruptly and peered through the driving rain in the direction of the summer-house.

Then, quickening his steps, he rapidly covered the intervening space and halted on the threshold of the shelter.
"What the devil----" he began, then paused and stared down at her with an odd glint of amusement in his eyes.

"So it's you, is it ?" he said at last, with a short laugh.
Once again Sara was conscious of the extraordinary intensity of his regard, and now, as a sudden ragged gleam of sunlight pierced the clouds, falling athwart his face, she realized what it was that induced it.

In both eyes the clear hazel of the iris was broken by a tiny, irregularly shaped patch of vivid blue, close to the pupil, and its effect was to give that curious depth and intentness of expression which Molly had tried to describe when she had said that Garth Trent's were the kind of eyes which "make you jump if he looked at you suddenly." Sara almost jumped now; then, supported by her indignant recollection of the man's churlishness on a former occasion, she bowed silently.
He continued to regard her with that lurking suggestion of amusement at the back of his eyes, and she was annoyed to feel herself flushing uncomfortably beneath his scrutiny.

At last he spoke again.
"You seem to have a faculty for intrusion," he remarked drily.
Sara's eyes flashed.
"And you, a fancy for solitude," she retorted.
"Exactly." He bowed ironically.