She read it in his face, because he thought himself unobserved, and for a space had cast his mask aside.

He stood and gazed as a man who, starving at soul, fed himself through his eyes, having no hope of other sustenance, or as a man weary with long carrying of a burden, for a space laid it down for rest and to gather power to go on.

She heard him draw a deep sigh almost stifled in its birth, and there was that in his face which she felt it was unseemly that a stranger like herself should behold, himself unknowing of her near presence.
She gently rose from her corner, wondering if she could retire from her retreat without attracting his observation; but as she did so, chance caused him to withdraw himself a little farther within the shadow of the screen, and doing so, he beheld her.
Then his face changed; the mask of noble calmness, for a moment fallen, resumed itself, and he bowed before her with the reverence of a courtly gentleman, undisturbed by the unexpectedness of his recognition of her neighbourhood.
"Madam," he said, "pardon my unconsciousness that you were near me.

You would pass ?" And he made way for her.
She curtseyed, asking his pardon with her dull, soft eyes.
"Sir," she answered, "I but retired here for a moment's rest from the throng and gaiety, to which I am unaccustomed.

But chiefly I sat in retirement that I might watch--my sister." "Your sister, madam ?" he said, as if the questioning echo were almost involuntary, and he bowed again in some apology.
"My Lady Dunstanwolde," she replied.