m first at the queen's drawing room, and afterward at every
ball and party to which she went.

It was, perhaps, natural--very natural--that the handsome blonde man
should be attracted by the beautiful brunette woman, without thought of
the supposed fortune that might have redeemed his mortgaged estates and
supported his distinguished title. But why should the betrothed of
Regulas Rothsay have been fascinated by this elegant English aristocrat?

Surely no two men were ever more diametrically opposite than the
American printer and the English duke.

Regulas Rothsay was tall, muscular, and robust, with large feet and
hands, inherited from many generations of hard-working forefathers. His
movements were clumsy; his manners were awkward, except when he was
inspired by some grand thought or tender sympathy, when his whole person
and appearance became transfigured. His sole enduring charms were his
beautiful eyes and melodious voice.

The Duke of Cumbervale was slight and elegant in form, with small,
perfectly shaped hands and feet--derived from a long line of idle and
useless ancestors--finely cut Grecian profile, pure, clear, white skin,
fine, silken, pale yellow hair and mustache, calm blue eyes, graceful
movements, and refined manners.

Regulas Rothsay was a man of the people, who did not know any ancestry
behind his laboring father, who could not have told the names of his
grandparents.

The Duke of Cumbervale was descended from eight generations of
noblemen.

Cora Haught saw and felt this contrast between the two men, so opposite
in birth, rank, person, manner, character, and cultivation.

Not all at once could she become an apostate to her faith, pledged to
Rule. But, in truth, she had always loved him more as a sister loves a
dear brother than as a maiden loves her betrothed husband. She had not
seen him for three years. And she had seen so much since they had
parted! In truth, his image had grown dim in her imagination.

She wrote to him briefly from London that her engagements were so
numerous as to preclude the possibility of her writing much, but that at
the end of the London season they expected to return home. This was
before she had--

"Foregathered with the de'il,"

in the shape of the handsome, eloquent, and fascinating Duke of
Cumbervale.

Afterward a strange madness had seized her; a sudden revulsion of
feeling, amounting almost to repugnance, against the rugged man of the
people who had