our favor must cease at once. I
promised to be most careful. The duke and duchess arranged that I was to
go home with them and live as the duchess' companion. Again she warned
me never upon any account to mention who I was, or anything about me.
She called me the daughter of an old friend--and so I was, although that
friend was a very humble one. From the first, Norman, she talked so much
about you; you were the model of everything chivalrous and noble, the
hero of a hundred pleasant stories. I had learned to love you long even
before I saw you--to love you after a fashion, Norman, as a hero. I can
see it all now. She laid the plot--we were the victims. I remember that
the very morning on which you saw me first the duchess sent me into the
trellised arbor; I was to wait there until she summoned me. Rely upon
it, Norman, she also gave orders that you were to be shown into the
morning-room, although she pretended to be annoyed at it. I can see all
the plot now plainly. I can only say---- Oh, Norman, you and I were both
blind! We ought to have seen through her scheme. Why should she have
brought us together if she had not meant that we should love each other?
What have we in common--I, the daughter of a felon; you, a nobleman,
proud of your ancestry, proud of your name? Oh, Norman, if I could but
die here at your feet, and save you from myself!"

Even as she spoke she sank sobbing, no longer on to his breast, no
longer with her arms clasped round his neck, but at his feet.

He raised her in his arms--for he loved her with passionate love.

"Madaline," he said, in a low voice, "do not make my task harder for me.
That which I have to do is indeed bitter to me--do not make it harder."

His appeal touched her. For his sake she must try to be strong.

Slowly he looked up at the long line of noblemen and women whose faces
shone down upon him; slowly he looked at her graceful figure and bowed
head of his wife, the daughter of a felon--the first woman who had ever
entered those walls with even the semblance of a stain upon her name. As
he looked at her the thought came to him that, if his housekeeper had
told him that she had inadvertently placed such a person--the daughter
of a felon--in his kitchen, he would never have rested until she had
been sent away.

He must part from her--this lovely girl-wife whom he loved with such
passionate love. The daughter of a criminal could not reign at
Beechgrove. If the parting cost his l