you will!" he said, at length. "I must be
out of England to-morrow, Valerie. Will you come with me as my wife?"

Early on Sunday morning Falkenstein was married, and out of his host of
friends, and relatives, and acquaintance, honest Tom Bevan was the only
man who turned him off, as Tom phrased it, and bid him good bye, with
few words but much regret, concealed, after the manner of Britons, for
the loss of his old chum. Tom's congratulations were the only ones that
fell on Valerie's ear in the empty church that morning; but I question
if Valerie ever noticed the absence of the marriage paraphernalia, so
entirely were her heart, and eyes, and mind, fixed on the one whom she
followed into exile. They were out of London before their part of it had
begun to lounge down to their late breakfasts; and as they crossed the
Channel, and the noon sun streamed on the white line of cliffs,
Falkenstein, holding her hands in his and looking down into her eyes,
forgot the follies of his past, the insecurity of his future, the tale
of his ruin and his flight, that would be on the tongues of his friends
on the morrow, and only remembered the love that came to him when all
others forsook him.

V.

THE SILVER CHIMES RING IN A HAPPY NEW YEAR.

One December evening Falkenstein sat in his lodgings in Vienna; the wood
fire burnt brightly, and if its flames lighted up a room whose
_appanages_ were rather different to the palace his grandfather had
owned in the imperial city, they at least shone on waving hair and
violet eyes that were very dear to him, and helped to teach him to
forget much that he had forfeited. From England he had come to Vienna,
where, as he had projected, his uncle, one of the cabinet, had been able
to help him to a diplomatic situation, for which his keen judgment and
varied information fitted him; and in Austria his name gave him at once
a brevet of the highest nobility. Of course the knowledge that he was
virtually outlawed, and that he was deep in the debt of such sharps as
Amadeus Levi, often galled his proud and sensitive nature; but Valerie
knew how to soften and to soothe him, and, under her caressing affection
or her ready vivacity, the dark hours passed away.

He was smoking his favorite briar-wood pipe, with Valerie sitting at his
feet, reading him some copy just going to her publishers in England, and
little Spit, not forgotten in their flight, lying on the hearth, when a
deep English voice startle