ents. She
sat on this morning, looking very stately and beautiful, in a dress of
moire antique, with a morning-cap of point lace--a woman to whom every
one involuntarily did homage.

Lord Chandos looked at her with wonder and admiration; then he sighed
deeply as he remembered why he had sought her. He sat down near her, the
very picture of dejection and misery.

"Mother," he said, abruptly, "I have behaved like a villain and a
coward. In what words am I to excuse myself?"

My lady's face darkened.

"I have not the pleasure of understanding you," she said. "Will you
explain yourself?"

"I have perjured myself. I have broken the most solemn vows that a man
could make. I have forsworn myself. Tell me in what words am I to tell
my guilt, or excuse it?"

A contemptuous smile stole over the face of my lady.

"Are you troubling yourself about that tempestuous young person, Leone?
Shame on you, when you have won the sweetest woman and the wealthiest
heiress in England for your wife!"

His voice was broken with emotion as he answered her:

"I cannot forget that I believed her to be my wife once, and I loved
her."

My lady interrupted him.

"My dear Lance, we all know what a boy's first love is. Ah, do believe
me, it is not worth thinking of; every one laughs at a boy's love. They
take it just as they take to whooping-cough or fever; it does not last
much longer either. In another year's time you will laugh at the very
mention of what you have called love. Believe me," continued her
ladyship, proudly, "that Lady Marion is the wife Heaven ordained for
you, and no other."

The handsome young head was bent low, and it seemed to my lady as though
a great tearless sob came from his lips. She laid her hand on his dark,
crisp waves of hair.

"I do sympathize with you, Lance," she said, in a kind voice; and when
Lady Lanswell chose to be kind no one could rival her. "You have,
perhaps, made some little sacrifice of inclination, but, believe me, you
have done right, and I am proud of you."

He raised his haggard young face to hers.

"I feel myself a coward and a villain, mother," he said, in a broken
voice. "I ought to have gone back to that poor girl; I ought not to have
dallied with temptation. I love Leone with the one love of my heart and
mind, and I am a weak, miserable coward that I have not been true to
her. I have lost my own self-respect, and I shall _never_ regain it."

My lady was patient; she had always e