oor wife mistress of Beechgrove. Say,
if the same thing had happened to you, would you not have acted in like
manner?"

"I believe that I should," answered the earl, gravely.

"However dearly you might love a woman, you could not place your coronet
on the brow of a convict's daughter," said Lord Arleigh. "I love my wife
a thousand times better than my life, yet I could not make her mistress
of Beechgrove."

"It was a cruel deception," observed the earl--"one that it is
impossible to understand. She herself--the lady you have made your
wife--must be quite as unhappy as yourself."

"If it be possible she is more so," returned Lord Arleigh; "but tell me,
if I had appealed to you in the dilemma--if I had asked your
advice--what would you have said to me?"

"I should have no resource but to tell you to act as you have done,"
replied the earl; "no matter what pain and sorrow it entailed you could
not have done otherwise."

"I thought you would agree with me. And now, Mountdean, tell me, do you
see any escape from my difficulty?"

"I do not, indeed," replied the earl.

"I had one hope," resumed Lord Arleigh; "and that was that the father
had perhaps been unjustly sentenced, or that he might after all prove
to be innocent. I went to see him--he is one of the convicts working at
Chatham."

"You went to see him!" echoed the earl, in surprise.

"Yes; and I gave up all hope from the moment I saw him. He is simply a
handsome reprobate. I asked him if it was true that he had committed the
crime, and he answered me quite frank, 'Yes.' I asked him if there were
any extenuating circumstances; he replied 'want of money.' When I had
seen and spoken to him, I felt convinced that the step I had taken with
regard to my wife was a wise one, however cruel it may have been. No man
in his senses would voluntarily admit a criminal's daughter into his
family."

"No; it is even a harder case than I thought it," said the earl. "The
only thing I can recommend is resignation."

Lord Mountdean thought that he would like to see the hapless young wife,
and learn if she suffered as her husband did. He wondered too what she
could be like, this convict's daughter who had been gifted with a regal
dower of grace and beauty--this lowly-born child of the people who had
been fair enough to charm the fastidious Lord Arleigh.

Meanwhile Madaline was all unconscious of the strides that destiny was
making in her favor. She had thought her husband's