will be trying to be better."

His face reddened; his heart beat at this capitulation of his rebel: he
rose from his chair and took her into his arms--an odd display for a man
so long stone-cold but to his dreams.

"My dear, my dear!" said he, "but in one detail that need never again be
named between us two, you have been the best of girls, and, God knows, I
am not the pattern parent!"

Her arm went round his neck, and she wept on his breast.

"Sour and dour--" said he.

"No, no!" she cried.

"And poor to penury."

"All the more need for a loving child. There are only the two of us."

He held her at arm's-length and looked at her wistfully in the wet wan
face and saw his wife Christina there. "By heaven!" he thought, "it is
no wonder that this man should hunt her."

"You have made me happy this day, Olivia," said he; "at least half
happy. I dare not mention what more was needed to make me quite
content."

"You need not," said she. "I know, and that--and that--is over too. I am
just your own Olivia."

"What!" he cried elate; "no more?"

"No more at all."

"Now praise God!" said he. "I have been robbed of Credit and estate, and
even of my name; I have seen king and country foully done by, and black
affront brought on our people, and still there's something left to live
for."

CHAPTER XXVI -- THE DUKE'S BALL

For some days Count Victor chafed at the dull and somewhat squalid
life of the inn. He found himself regarded coldly among strangers; the
flageolet sounded no longer in the private parlour; the Chamberlain
stayed away. And if Drimdarroch had seemed ill to find from Doom, he was
absolutely indiscoverable here. Perhaps there was less eagerness in the
search because other affairs would for ever intrude--not the Cause (that
now, to tell the truth, he somehow regarded moribund; little wonder
after eight years' inaction!) nor the poignant home-thoughts that made
his ride through Scotland melancholy, but affairs more recent, and
Olivia's eyes possessed him.

A morning had come of terrific snow, and made all the colder, too, his
sojourn in the country of MacCailen Mor. Now he looked upon mountains
white and far, phantom valleys gulping chilly winds, the sea alone with
some of its familiar aspect, yet it, too, leaden to eye and heart as it
lay in a perpetual haze between the headlands and lazily rose and fell
in the bays.

The night of the ball was to him like a reprieve. From the darkness of
thos