sterday, Lance. I
should like to send him a box filled with everything he likes best."

"You shall, if it pleases you, my darling," he answered.

She leaned over the side of the boat watching the water, drawing her
hand through the clear stream.

"Happy," she repeated, rather to herself than to him; "I can safely say
this, that I have had so much happiness since I have been here that if I
were wretched all my life afterward I should still have had far more
happiness than falls to the lot of many people."

She remembered those words in after years; and she owned to herself that
they had been most perfectly true.

The few months passed at River View had been most perfectly happy--no
shade of care had come over her, no doubt, no fear--nothing that chilled
the warmth of her love, nothing that marred its perfect trust. In some
lives there comes a pause of silent, intense bliss just before the
storm, even as the wind rests before the hurricane.

"You make me very proud, Leone," said Lord Chandos, "when you tell me of
your happiness; I can only say may it be like the light of heaven,
eternal."

CHAPTER XIV.

"TRUE UNTIL DEATH."

For some long months that case stood on the records. Every paper in
England had some mention of it; as a rule people laughed when they read
anything about it. They said it was a case of Corydon and Phyllis, a
dairy-maid's love, a farce, a piece of romantic nonsense on the part of
a young nobleman who ought to know better. It created no sensation; the
papers did not make much of it; they simply reported a petition on the
part of the Right Honorable the Earl of Lanswell and Lucia, his wife,
that the so-called marriage contracted by their son, Lancelot, Lord
Chandos, should be set aside as illegal, on account of his being a
minor, and having married without their consent.

There was a long hearing, a long consideration, a long lawsuit; and it
was, as every one had foreseen it would be, in favor of the earl against
his son. The marriage was declared null and void--the contract illegal;
there could be no legal marriage on Lord Chandos' side without the full
and perfect consent of his parents.

When that decision was given, Lady Lanswell smiled. Mr. Sewell
congratulated her on it. My lady smiled again.

"I may thank the law," she said, "which frees my son from the
consequences of his own folly."

"Remember," said the lawyer, "that he can marry her, my lady, when he
comes of age."