for news of him, telling him how
bravely and happily she was bearing the separation from him, only
longing to know something of him.

The warm, sultry month of August had set in, and she was working hard as
ever; there was but one comfort to her in this long absence--the longer
he was away from her, the more fit she should be to take her place as
his wife when he did return. She felt now that she could be as stately
as the Countess of Lanswell herself, with much more grace.

She had been thinking over her future when that letter came; it found
her in the same pretty room where he had bidden her good-bye. When the
maid entered with the letter on a salver, she had looked up with a
quick, passionate sense of pleasure. Perhaps this was to tell her when
he would come. She seized the dainty envelope with a low cry of intense
rapture.

"At last," she said to herself, "at last. Oh, my love, how could you be
silent so long?"

Then she saw that it was not Lance's writing, but a hand that was quite
strange to her. Her face paled even as she opened it; she turned to the
signature before she read the letter; it was "Lucia, Countess of
Lanswell." Then she knew that it was from her mortal enemy, the one on
whom she had sworn revenge.

She read it through. What happened while she read it? The reapers were
reaping in the cornfields, the wind had sunk to the lightest whisper,
some of the great red roses fell dead, the leaves of the white lilies
died in the heat of the sun, the birds were tired of singing; even the
butterflies had sunk, tired out, on the breasts of the flowers they
loved; there was a golden glow over everything; wave after wave of
perfume rose on the warm summer air; afar off one heard the song of the
reaper, and the cry of the sailors as the ships sailed down the stream;
there was life, light, lightness all around, and she stood in the middle
of it, stricken as one dead, holding her death warrant in her hand. She
might have been a marble statue as she stood there, so white, so silent,
so motionless.

She read and reread it; at first she thought it must be a sorry jest; it
could not be true, it was impossible. If she took up the Bible there,
and the printed words turned blood-red before her eyes, it would be far
less wonderful than that this should be true. A sorry, miserable jest
some one had played her, but who--how? No, it was no jest.

She must be dreaming--horrible dreams come to people in their sleep; she