to see me again? Conspiracy or no conspiracy, my poverty, her
riches, go hang. I shall ask for her love this very day."

He had finished a very elaborate toilet for him, and Reynolds appeared
to summon him to his breakfast, which the faithful servitor cooked and
served to him in the old sitting-room. As Geoffrey cracked his eggs and
drank his coffee, Reynolds looked wistfully at his master's handsome
face, for he saw a new expression there--a look bright with hope and the
consciousness of an awakened soul--and the old servant wondered whether
the beautiful woman, who had visited the house two nights before, had
changed his master's face so. He noticed, too, that Geoffrey was smartly
dressed, and that he had tied his neck-tie with great care, and had put
on a coat from one of the crack New York tailors, so that when the old
servitor disappeared to polish his master's boots he said to himself:

"The young earl is going courting, for a certainty, and a fine lady he
will bring home as his bride. Will she buy back his house and lands for
him, I wonder?" And Reynolds smiled to himself as he pictured the head
of his beloved family restored to his own again and Ripon House under
the faithful Reynolds, major-domo.

The dinner at Ripon House after the coaching-party had been dull indeed.
Mrs. Carey had sent her excuses to Miss Windsor, and the latter, who had
seen her head upon Geoffrey's shoulder in the Cathedral in the morning,
was relieved at hearing them.

For within Maggie's tender heart a love for Geoffrey Ripon had gained
the mastery since the interview in the secret chamber. Long had that
love haunted her gentle heart, a shade at first, which flitted away for
a while, only to return again and trouble her. But just as she had
installed her love in the innermost sanctuary, fair and godlike, she had
discovered, as she thought, that her idol had feet of clay; that the man
whose lips and tongue told her that he loved her on the one day was on
the next saying the same thing with the same lying lips to another
woman.

Mrs. Carey had been Geoffrey's first love. Sir John had told her that,
she remembered. "He loves her still and he pretends to care for me
because I am rich," she said to herself as she lay tossing sleepless
during the night, a dull pang racking her heart with a real physical
pain. In the early morning she arose and looked out of the window over
toward Geoffrey's house, down over the lawn and the cliff path and