usively for herself, irrespective of all extraneous appurtenances
and advantages, is the supreme hope innate in every woman, and the
dread that her wealth might invest her with charms not intrinsic, had
made Leo unusually distrustful of the motives of her numerous suitors.
That Leighton Douglass loved the woman, not the heiress, she knew
beyond the possibility of cavil or doubt, and when, after mature
deliberation, she promised her hand to Mr. Dunbar, she had felt equally
sure that no mercenary consideration biased his choice or inspired his
professions of attachment.

For a nature so proudly poised, so averse to all impulsive
manifestations of emotion, her affections were surprisingly warm and
clinging, and she loved him with all the depth and fervor of her
tender, generous heart; hence the slow torture of her humiliation in
the hour of disenchantment. To women who love is given a sixth sense, a
subtile instinct whereby, as in an occult alembic, they discern the
poison that steals into their wine of joy; so Leo was not long in
ignorance that her coveted kingdom belonged by right of conquest to
another, and that she reigned only nominally and by courtesy.

The evil we most abhor generally espies us afar off, chases tirelessly,
crouches at our feet, grimacing triumphantly at our impotence to escape
its loathsome clutches; and Leo's pride bled sorely in the realization
that she had sold her hand and heart for base counterfeit equivalents.
In a crisis of keen disappointment, only very noble natures can remain
strictly just, yet in arraigning her lover for disloyalty, this
sorrowing woman abstained from casting all the blame upon him. He had
not intentionally deceived her, had not deliberately betrayed her
trust; he was the unwilling victim of an inexplicable fascination
against which she felt assured he had struggled sullenly and
persistently; and which, in destroying the beautiful edifice of their
mutual hopes, offered him nothing but humiliation in exchange.

Standing to-day beside the pyramid of scarlet geraniums, and velvety,
gold-powdered begonias in the centre of the octagonal room, where the
warm Spring sun shone down through the dome, falling aslant on the
great snowy owl and the rose-colored cockatoo smoothing their plumes on
the top of the glittering brass cages--Leo contrasted the luxurious and
elegant details of her lovely home with the grim and bleak cell where,
in shame and ignominy, dwelt the yo