eart of
marble to deal with!" cried Leone.

"You cannot have such great affection for your husband, if you speak to
his mother in this fashion," said the countess, mockingly.

The girl stretched out her white arms with a despairing cry.

"Give me back my husband, and I recall my threats."

Then, seeing that mocking smile on that proud face, her arms fell with a
low sigh.

"I am mad," she said, in a low voice, "to plead to you--quite mad!"

"Most decidedly," said the countess. "It appears to me there is more
truth in that one observation than in any other you have made this
evening. As I am not particularly inclined to the society of mad men or
mad women, you will excuse me if I withdraw."

Without another word, my lady touched the bell. To the servant who
entered she said:

"Will you show this person out as far as the park gates, please?"

And, without another look at Leone, she quitted the room.

Leone followed in silence. She did not even look around the sumptuous
home one day she believed to be hers; she went to the great gates which
the man-servant held open as she passed through. The sun had set, and
the gray, sweet gloaming lay over the land. There was a sound of falling
water, and Leone made her way to it. It was a cascade that fell from a
small, but steep rock. The sound of the rippling water was to her like
the voice of an old friend, the sight of it like the face of some one
whom she loved. She sat down by it, and it sung to her the same sweet
old song:

"A ring in pledge he gave her,
And vows of love we spoke;
Those vows are all forgotten,
The ring asunder broke."

It would not be so with her, ah no! If ever the needle was true to the
pole, the flowers to the sun, the tides to the moon, the stars to the
heavens, Lord Chandos would be true to her.

So she believed, and, despite her sorrow, her heart found rest in the
belief.

CHAPTER XIX.

LEONE'S PROPHECY.

No words could do justice to the state of mind in which Lord Chandos
found himself after that interview at Cawdor. He rushed back to London.
Of the three previous days remaining he spent one in hunting after the
shrewdest lawyers in town. Each and all laughed at him--there was the
law, plain enough, so plain that a child could read and understand it.
They smiled at his words, and said, half-contemptuously, they could not
have imagined any one so ignorant of the law. They sympathized with him
when he spoke