Margery Daw by Bertha M. Clay — Read

Vane Charteris found the day pass very slowly, with no one but her aunt to amuse her. She sat listlessly beside Mrs. Crosbie during the long drive, feeling bored and wearied, and yawned through the afternoon in her room, finding no pleasure in her mother's society and less in her own. The thought that had come to her suddenly in the morning grew stronger as the hours passed. As Stuart Crosbie's wife, she would taste once more the sweetness of her lost power.

She was leaning by her open window, thinking this, heedless of the beauty of the picture that stretched before her, when her eyes fell on a man's figure strolling leisurely on the lawn -- a strange, odd-looking man, who seemed not quite at home in his surroundings. Miss Charteris, roused from her languor, watched him intently, and at once determined that the intruder was a tramp -- perhaps one of a gang of thieves. She rose quickly, and made her way from her room, picking up her sun-shade as she went. Her aunt was out at a garden party, which she had vainly tried to induce Miss Charteris to attend, her mother was enjoying a _siesta_, and her uncle was absorbed in his books. There was no one about, and the castle seemed quite deserted as Vane walked across the hall to the back grounds. The man was standing as she had seen him last, his hands in his pockets, his hat pulled low over his brows. She went toward him at once.