h had hurried him away.

He had only retired from one phase of public life to enter upon another.

There was to be a new Parliament. And at the solicitations of many
interested parties, and perhaps also at the promptings of his own late
ambition, Sir Lemuel Levison consented to stand for the borough of Lone.
In the absence of the young Marquis of Arondelle there was no one to
oppose him, and he was returned by an almost unanimous vote.

Early in February, Sir Lemuel Levison took his dreaming daughter and went
up to London to take his seat in the House of Commons at the meeting of
Parliament.

He engaged a sumptuously furnished house on Westbourne Terrace, and
invited a distant relative, Lady Belgrave, the childless widow of a
baronet, to come and pass the season with him and chaperone his daughter
on her entrance into society.

Lady Belgrade was sixty years old, tall, stout, fair-complexioned,
gray-haired, healthy, good-humored, and well-dressed--altogether as
commonplace and harmless a fine lady as could be found in the fashionable
world.

Salome had never seen her, scarcely ever heard of her before the day of
her arrival at Westbourne Terrace.

Salome met Lady Belgrade with courtesy and kindness, but with much
indifference.

Lady Belgrade, on her part, met her young kinswoman with critical
curiosity.

"She is not pretty, not at all pretty, and one does not like to have a
plain girl to bring out. She is not pretty, and what is worse than all,
she seems _to know it_. And she can only grow pretty by believing
that she is so. A girl with such a pair of eyes as hers can always get
the reputation of beauty if she can only be made to believe in herself,"
was Lady Belgrade's secret comment; but--

"What beautiful eyes you have, my dear!" she said with effusion, as she
kissed Salome on both cheeks.

The girl smiled and blushed with pleasure, for this was the first time
in all her life that she had been credited with any beauty at all.

Lady Belgrade was partly right and partly wrong.

A girl with such a physique as Salome could never be pretty, never be
handsome, but, with such a soul as hers, might grow beautiful.

At her Majesty's first drawing-room, Salome Levison was presented at
court, where she attracted the attention, only as the daughter of Sir
Lemuel Levison, the new Radical member for Lone, and as the sole heiress
of the great banker's almost fabulous wealth.

Then under the experienced guidance of