should wake presently and find it all a black, blank dream. Yet, no--no
dream, the laughing August sunlight lay all round her, the birds were
singing, there was the flash of the deep river, with the pleasure-boats
slowly drifting down the stream. It was no dream, it was a horrible
reality; Lord Chandos, the lover whom she had loved with her whole
heart, who ought, under the peculiar circumstances, to have given her
even double the faith and double the love a husband gives his wife; he,
who was bound to her even by the weakness of the tie that should have
been stronger, had deserted her.

She did not cry out, she did not faint or swoon; she did not sink as she
had done before, a senseless heap on the ground; she stood still, as a
soldier stands sometimes when he knows that he has to meet his death
blow.

Every vestige of color had faded from her face and lips; if the angel of
death had touched her with his fingers, she could not have looked more
white and still. Over and over again she read the words that took from
her life its brightness and its hope, that slew her more cruelly than
poison or steel, that made their way like winged arrows to her heart,
and changed her from a tender, loving, passionate girl to a vengeful
woman.

Slowly she realized it, slowly the letter fell from her hands, slowly
she fell on her knees.

"He has forsaken me!" she cried. "Oh, my God! he has forsaken me, and I
cannot die!"

No one cares to stand by the wheel or the rack while some poor body is
tortured to death; who can stand by while a human heart is breaking with
the extremity of anguish? When such a grief comes to any one as to
Leone, one stands by in silence; it is as though a funeral is passing,
and one is breathless from respect to the dead.

The best part of her died as she knelt there; the blue of the sky, the
gold of the shining sun, the song of the birds, the sweet smell of
flowers were never the same to her again. Almost all that was good and
noble, brave and bright, died as she knelt there. When that letter
reached her, she was, if anything, better than the generality of women.
She had noble instincts, grand ideas, great generosity, and
self-sacrifice; it was as though a flame of fire came to her, and burned
away every idea save one, and that was revenge.

"He loved me," she cried; "he loved me truly and well; but he was weak
of purpose and my enemy has taken him from me."

Hours passed--all the August sunlight died; t