ght arm.

Salome looked up, her heart gave a great bound and then stood still.

The original of the portrait in the tower, the self-devoted son, the
self-exiled heir, the idol of her pure worship, the young Marquis of
Arondelle stood before her.

And while the scene swam before her eyes, the Premier bowed, and
presenting him, said:

"Sir Lemuel, let me introduce to you, Mr. John Scott of the _National
Liberator_. Mr. Scott, Sir Lemuel Levison, our new member for Lone."

Mr. John Scott!

CHAPTER III.

THE RUINED HEIR.

Where, meanwhile, was the "mad" duke with his loyal son?

Various reports had been circulated concerning them, so long as they had
been remembered. Some had said that they had emigrated to Australia;
others that they had gone to Canada; others again that they were living
on the Continent. All agreed that wherever they were, they must be in
great destitution.

But now, three years had passed since the fall of Lone and the
disappearance of the ruined ducal family, and they were very nearly
forgotten.

Meanwhile where were they then?

They were hidden in the great wilderness of London.

On leaving Lone, the stricken duke, crushed equally under domestic
affliction and financial ruin, and failing both in mind and body, started
for London, tenderly escorted by his son.

It was the last extravagance of the young marquis to engage a whole
compartment in a first-class carriage on the Great Northern Railway
train, that the fallen and humbled duke might travel comfortably and
privately without being subjected to annoyance by the gaze of the
curious, or comments of the thoughtless.

On reaching London they went first to an obscure but respectable inn in
a borough, where they remained unknown for a few days, while the marquis
sought for lodgings which should combine privacy, decency and cheapness,
in some densely-populated, unfashionable quarter of the city, where their
identity would be lost in the crowd, and where they would never by any
chance meet any one whom they had ever met before.

They found such a refuge at length, in a lodging-house kept by the widow
of a curate in Catharine street, Strand.

Here the ruined duke and marquis dropped their titles, and lived only
under their baptismal name and family names.

Here Archibald-Alexander-John Scott, Duke of Hereward and Marquis of
Arondelle in the Peerage of England, and Baron Lone, of Lone, in the
Peerage of Scotland, was known only