and the lovers went
forth for their ride.

It is not necessary to linger over this courtship, in which "the course
of true love" ran so smooth as to seem monotonous to all but the lovers
themselves.

The ride was followed by the small dinner party. And after that the young
marquis became a daily visitor at Elmthorpe House, where he was ever
received with fatherly affection by Sir Lemuel, and with subdued delight
by Salome.

The lovers had come to a mutual understanding for days before the marquis
made a formal proposal for Miss Levison's hand.

But it happened one evening that they found themselves alone in the
drawing-room. They were seated at a table, loaded with books of
engravings, photographs, and so forth.

Salome was turning over the pages of Dore's Milton.

"Close the volume, now, Miss Levison," Lord Arondelle said at length,
uttering the formal words with a tone and look of such reverential
tenderness as to seem a caress.

Salome shut the book, and looked up to read the open volume of his
eloquent face; but her eyes instantly sank beneath the gaze of ardent
passion that met them.

"Listen to me, Salome, my beloved; for I love you, and have loved you
ever since the first moment when I met the beautiful spirit beaming
through your sweet eyes--'Sweetest eyes were ever seen!' Dear eyes! look
on me!"

Salome, for all her profound and ardent affections, was still a very shy
maiden. She wished to raise her eyes to his; she wished to pour her heart
out to him; to let him have the comfort of knowing how perfectly she
loved him, how utterly she was his own. But she could not look at him,
she could not speak to him as yet. Her dark eyelashes drooped to her
crimson cheeks.

"My beloved, do you hear me? I am telling you how I have loved you since
I first met your heavenly eyes. This is no lover's rhapsody, my own, for
your eyes are heavenly in their spiritual beauty. And they have haunted
me, Salome, like the eyes of a guardian angel ever since they first
looked upon me. Daily they would have drawn me to your side but for my
wrecked and ruined state," he said, with a half suppressed sigh.

His look, his tone, and, more than all, his allusion to the calamity of
his house, reached her soul, and broke the spell of reserve by which she
was bound.

"Oh, do not say that you are ruined!" she cried, in a voice thrilled and
thrilling with profound emotion. "Do not think that you are ruined.
_You_ could _never_ be r