his eyes were
clearer than others, for he could read a tragedy in her face. Then Sir
Frank left them, having performed his part with a very ill grace.

"Leone, have you said good-bye to your uncle?" asked Lord Chandos.

"I left a little note to be given him when he returns home this evening.
How he will miss me."

"And how fortunate I am to have you, my darling; there is no one in the
wide world so happy. We will drive over to Rashleigh Station. I do not
care who sees me now, no one can part us. Dr. Hervey thinks I went home
to London this morning, but I won a wife before starting, did I not,
Leone, my beautiful love? You are Lady Chandos now. What are you
thinking of, my darling?"

"I was wondering, Lance, if there was anything in our marriage that
could possibly invalidate it and make it illegal?"

"No," he replied, "I have been too careful of you, Leone, for that. You
are my wife before God and man. Nothing shall take you from me but
death."

"But death," she repeated slowly.

And in after years they both remembered the words.

CHAPTER IX.

A MYSTERIOUS TELEGRAM.

Cawdor took rank among the most stately homes of England: it had been
originally one of the grand Saxon strongholds, one, too, which the
Normans had found hard to conquer.

As time wore on the round towers and the keep fell into
ruins--picturesque and beautiful ruins, round which the green ivy hung
in luxuriant profusion; then the ruins were left standing.

Little by little the new place was built, not by any particular design;
wing after wing, story after story, until it became one of the most
picturesque and most magnificent homes in England. Cawdor it was called;
neither court, hall nor park, simply Cawdor; and there were very few
people in England who did not know Cawdor. There was no book of
engravings that had not a view of Cawdor for its first and greatest
attraction; there was no exhibition of pictures in which one did not see
ruins of Cawdor. It had in itself every attribute of beauty, the
ivy-mantled ruins, the keep, from which one could see into five
different counties, the moat, now overgrown with trees; the
old-fashioned draw-bridge which contrasted so beautifully with the grand
modern entrance, worthy of a Venetian palace; the winding river, the
grand chain of hills, and in the far distance the blue waters of the
Channel.

There could not have been a more beautiful or picturesque spot on earth
than Cawdor. It had bel