were very
pleasant ones; then she took up a volume of poems, read a few lines, and
then laid the book down again. The dark eyes, with a gleam of impatience
in them, wandered to the clock.

"How slowly those hands move!" she said.

"You are restless," observed a calm, low voice; "watching a clock always
makes time seem long."

"Ah, Lady Peters," said the rich, musical tones, "when I cease to be
young, I shall cease to be impatient."

Lady Peters, the chosen confidante and chaperon of the brilliant
heiress, was an elderly lady whose most striking characteristic appeared
to be calmness and repose. She was richly dressed in a robe of black
_moire_, and she wore a cap of point lace; her snowy hair was braided
back from a broad white brow; her face was kindly, patient, cheerful;
her manner, though somewhat stately, the same. She evidently deeply
loved the beautiful girl whose bright face was turned to hers.

"He said three in his note, did he not, Lady Peters?"

"Yes, my dear, but it is impossible for any one to be always strictly
punctual; a hundred different things may have detained him."

"But if he were really anxious to see me, he would not let anything
detain him," she said.

"Your anxiety about him would be very flattering to him if he knew it,"
remarked the elder lady.

"Why should I not be anxious? I have always loved him better than the
whole world. I have had reason to be anxious."

"Philippa, my dear Philippa, I would not say such things if I were you,
unless I had heard something really definite from himself."

The beautiful young heiress laughed a bright, triumphant laugh.

"Something definite from himself! Why, you do not think it likely that
he will long remain indifferent to me, even if he be so now--which I do
not believe."

"I have had so many disappointments in life that I am afraid of being
sanguine," said Lady Peters; and again the young beauty laughed.

"It will seem so strange to see him again. I remember his going away so
well. I was very young then--I am young now, but I feel years older. He
came down to Verdun Royal to bid us good-by, and I was in the grounds.
He had but half an hour to stay, and mamma sent him out to me,"

The color deepened in her face as she spoke, and the light shone in her
splendid eyes--there was a kind of wild, restless passion in her words.

"I remember it all so well! There had been a heavy shower of rain in the
early morning, that had cleared away, leavi