friend, in Miss Windsor's ear.

"I have met her before," she said, quietly.

"Have you! Oh, in England, of course."

But Maggie did not heed her words. The noise of voices at the door
attracted her attention. The crowd was giving way before the wand of the
Lord Chamberlain, and it was evident from the commotion that something
unusual was about to take place. She looked and saw two men advance with
eager step and fall on bended knee at the foot of the throne amid a buzz
of excitement.

"My Sovereign and my King," they cried together.

"Rise, Duke, rise," said George the Fifth, wiping with genuine emotion
his watery eyes, and he stepped down to clasp the hands of an old man
with a bald head, whom Maggie recognized to be the Duke of Bayswater.

"Rise, Featherstone, rise," said the King to the other.

"Most Gracious Sovereign, I kiss your hand." Featherstone it was, and he
pressed his lips against the knuckles of the sometime King; but the
words were spoken coldly, like words of duty. Lost in amazement at this
unusual scene, Miss Windsor had failed to observe a young man follow
soberly and even sadly in the footsteps of the other two and stand
aloof, though expectantly. Her eyes and those of the King must have
fallen upon him almost at the same moment. The heart in her bosom leapt
wildly. Pale and worn as he was, she recognized Geoffrey Ripon.

"Lord Brompton!" exclaimed the King, and he grew confused, for the peer
did not kneel as the others had done. "Lord Brompton, I am glad to see
you," and he remounted the throne.

"Sire, I have come to bring you a legacy from John Dacre," said Ripon,
and he drew from his breast as he spoke a smoke-stained and tattered
piece of the royal banner and laid it at the foot of the throne. "This
is from Aldershot, sir."

A murmur spread through the room, and the color mounted to the King's
face. "Sirrah, I do not understand you. I am your King."

"As for myself," said Geoffrey, without regarding the monarch's frown,
"I return this, which my ancestor more than a century ago first
unsheathed in fealty to the House of Hanover." He took from its scabbard
the sword with which Maggie had girded him that day when he courted her
in the haunted chamber of Ripon House, and snapped the blade in twain.
He flung the pieces on the ground and turned to leave the room. At the
first step he encountered the glance of the woman he loved bent upon him
with an expression in which pride and tenderness