ur secret," said the baroness.

"Come weal, come woe, my honor requires that this secret should be told
to the noble and confiding gentleman who is about to make me his wife,"
murmured Valerie.

"Your honor, Mademoiselle, is in the keeping of your father, until, by
giving you in marriage, he passes it into the keeping of your husband.
You are not to concern yourself about it. If your father should deem that
your 'honor' demands your secret to be confided to your betrothed
husband, he will divulge it to him: if he does not divulge it, then rest
assured honor does not require him to do so. Now let us hear no more
about it."

Valerie sighed and yielded, but she was not satisfied.

The betrothal was immediately announced to the world, and the marriage,
which soon followed, was celebrated in the church of Notre Dame with the
greatest _eclat_.

Directly after the wedding the duke took his bride on a long tour,
extending over Europe and into Asia; and after an absence of several
months, carried her to England, and settled down for the autumn on his
English patrimonial estate, Hereward Hold, (for Castle Lone was then a
ruin and Inch Lone a wilderness, which no one had yet dreamed of
rebuilding and restoring.)

The youthful duchess, in her quiet English home, was like Louise la
Valliere in the Convent of St. Cyr, "not joyous, but content."

She tried to make her noble husband happy, by fulfilling all the duties
of a wife--_except one_. She knew a wife should have no secrets from
her husband, yet, in her fear of disturbing the sweet domestic peace, in
which her wearied spirit rested, she kept from him the secret of her
first wild marriage.

At the meeting of Parliament in February, the Duke of Hereward took his
beautiful young wife to London, and established her in their magnificent
town-house--Hereward House, Kensington.

At the first Royal drawing-room at Buckingham Palace, the young duchess
was presented to the queen, and soon after she commenced her career as a
woman of fashion by giving a grand ball at Hereward House.

The Duke of Hereward was very fond and very proud of his lovely young
bride, whose beauty soon became the theme of London clubs--though
invidious critics insisted that she was much too pale and grave ever to
become a reigning belle.

Yes, she was very pale and grave; peaceful, not happy.

Scarcely twelve months had passed since she had been cruelly torn from
the idolized young husband of her you