girl to win her affections, unless he intended
to make her his marchioness--which was an idea too preposterous to be
entertained for an instant--therefore there could be no truth in these
rumors.

And at length, when the great thunderbolt fell that destroyed Lone and
banished the ducal family, there were not wanting "guid neebors" who
taunted Rose Cameron with such words as these:

"The braw young markis hae made a fule o' ye, lass. Thoul't ne'er see him
mair. And a guid job, too. Best ye'd ne'er see him at a'!"

But the handsome shepherdess betrayed no sign of mortification or doubt.
When such prognostics were uttered, she crested her queenly head with a
smile of conscious power, and looked as though--"she could, an if she
would,"--tell more about the Marquis of Arondelle, than any of these
people guessed.

Meanwhile, princely Lone passed into the possession of Sir Lemuel
Levison, a London banker of enormous wealth. He had not always been Sir
Lemuel Levison. But he had once been Lord Mayor of London, and for some
part that he had taken in a public demonstration or a royal pageant, (I
forget which,) he had been knighted by her Majesty.

He was, at this time, a tall, spare, fair-faced, gray-haired and gray
bearded man of sixty-five. He was a widower, with "one only daughter,"
the youngest and sole survivor of a large family of children.

This daughter, Salome, had never known a mother's love nor a father's
care. She was under three years old when her mother passed away.

Then her father, hating his desolate home, broke up his establishment on
Westbourne Terrace, London, and placed his infant daughter under the care
of the nuns in the Convent of the Holy Nativity in France.

Here Salome Levison passed the days of her dreamy childhood and early
youth. Her father seldom found time to visit her at her convent school,
and she never went home to spend her holidays. She had no home to go to.

When Salome was eighteen years of age, the Superior of the convent wrote
to Sir Lemuel Levison, enclosing a letter from his daughter that
considerably startled the absorbed banker and forgetful father. He had
not seen his daughter for two years, and now these letters informed him
that she wished to become a Nun of the Holy Nativity, and to enter upon
her novitiate immediately! But that being a minor, she could not do so
without his consent.

His sole surviving child! The sole heiress of his enormous wealth! On
whom he depended,