letter all that was
most kind; and, though she felt that there was no real grounds for it,
she impressed upon her mother the need of the utmost reticence. Margaret
Dornham understood from the first.

"Never have a moment's uneasiness, Madaline," she said. "From the hour I
cross your threshold until I leave, your father's name shall never pass
my lips."

It was a little less dreary for Madaline when her mother was with her.
Though they did not talk much, and had but few tastes alike, Margaret
was all devotion, all attention to her child.

She was sadly at a loss to understand matters. She had quite expected to
find Madaline living at Beechgrove--she could not imagine why she was
alone in Winiston House. The arrangement had seemed reasonable enough
while Lord Arleigh was abroad, but now that he had returned to England,
why did he not come to his wife, or why did not she go to him? She could
not understand it; and as Madaline volunteered no explanation, her
mother asked for none.

But, when day after day she saw her daughter fading away--when she saw
the fair face lose its color, the eyes their light--when she saw the
girl shrink from the sunshine and the flowers, from all that was bright
and beautiful, from all that was cheerful and exhilarating--she knew
that her soul was sick unto death. She would look with longing eyes at
the calm, resigned face, wishing with all her heart that she might
speak, yet not daring to do so.

What seemed to her even more surprising[8] was that no one appeared to
think such a state of things strange; and when she had been at Winiston
some few weeks, she discovered that, as far as the occupants of the
house were concerned, the condition of matters was not viewed as
extraordinary. She offered no remark to the servants, and they offered
none to her, but from casual observations she gathered that her daughter
had never been to Beechgrove, but had lived at Winiston all her married
life, and that Lord Arleigh had never been to visit her.

How was this? What did the terrible pain in her daughter's face mean?
Why was her bright young life so slowly but surely fading away? She
noted it for some time in silence, and then she decided to speak.

One morning when Madaline had turned with a sigh from the old-fashioned
garden with its wilderness of flowers, Margaret said, gently:

"Madaline, I never hear you speak of the Duchess of Hazlewood who was so
very kind to you. Does she never come to see y