s, had folded the Marchioness to his heart.

Winnifred rose, her heart beating wildly. One glance was enough. The
newcomer, Lord Mordaunt, was none other than the Unknown, the
Unaccountable, to whose protection she had twice owed her life.

With a wild cry Winnifred Clair leaped across the flagstones of the
terrace and fled into the park.

CHAPTER VII

THE PROPOSAL

They stood beneath the great trees of the ancestral park, into which
Lord Mordaunt had followed Winnifred at a single bound. All about them
was the radiance of early June.

Lord Mordaunt knelt on one knee on the greensward, and with a touch in
which respect and reverence were mingled with the deepest and manliest
emotion, he took between his finger and thumb the tip of the girl's
gloved hand.

"Miss Clair," he uttered, in a voice suffused with the deepest
yearning, yet vibrating with the most profound respect, "Miss
Clair--Winnifred--hear me, I implore!"

"Alas," cried Winnifred, struggling in vain to disengage the tip of her
glove from the impetuous clasp of the young nobleman, "alas, whither can
I fly? I do not know my way through the wood, and there are bulls in all
directions. I am not used to them! Lord Mordaunt, I implore you, let the
tears of one but little skilled in the art of dissimulation----"

"Nay, Winnifred," said the Young Earl, "fly not. Hear me out!"

"Let me fly," begged the unhappy girl.

"You must not fly," pleaded Mordaunt. "Let me first, here upon bended
knee, convey to you the expression of a devotion, a love, as ardent and
as deep as ever burned in a human heart. Winnifred, be my bride!"

"Oh, sir," sobbed Winnifred, "if the knowledge of a gratitude, a
thankfulness from one whose heart will ever treasure as its proudest
memory the recollection of one who did for one all that one could have
wanted done for one--if this be some poor guerdon, let it suffice. But,
alas, my birth, the dark secret of my birth forbids----"

"Nay," cried Mordaunt, leaping now to his feet, "your birth is all
right. I have looked into it myself. It is as good--or nearly as
good--as my own. Till I knew this, my lips were sealed by duty. While I
supposed that you had a lower birth and I an upper, I was bound to
silence. But come with me to the house. There is one arrived with me who
will explain all."

Hand in hand the lovers, for such they now were, returned to the Chase.
There in the great hall the Marquis and the Marchioness were stand