id; "I am one of your
greatest admirers."

"You are very kind, Lady Chandos," said Leone.

Then Lady Marion turned to her hostess.

"I should like to remain with Madame Vanira," she said; "that is, if you
will, madame?"

Leone drew aside her rich cream-colored draperies and lace. Lady Chandos
sat down by her side.

"I am so pleased to meet you," she continued, with what was unusual
animation with her. "I have longed to see you off the stage."

Leone smiled in the fair face.

"I can only hope," she said, "that you will like me as well off the
stage as you do on."

"I am sure of that," said Lady Chandos, with charming frankness.

She admired the beautiful and gifted singer more than she cared to say.
She added, timidly:

"Now that I have met you here, madame, I shall hope for the pleasure and
honor of receiving you at my own house."

She wondered why Madame Vanira drew back with a slight start: it seemed
so strange to be asked into the house that she believed to be her own.

"I shall be delighted," continued Lady Chandos. "I give a ball on
Wednesday week; promise me that you will come."

"I will promise you to think of it," she replied, and Lady Chandos
laughed blithely.

"That means you will come," she said, and the next moment Lord Chandos
entered the room.

CHAPTER XLV.

AN INVITATION.

They both saw him at the same moment. Leone, with a sudden paling of her
beautiful face, with a keen sense of sharp pain, and Lady Chandos with a
bright, happy flush.

"Here is my husband," she said, proudly; little dreaming that the
beautiful singer had called him husband, too.

He came toward them slowly; it seemed to him so wonderful that these two
should be sitting side by side--the woman he loved with a passionate
love, and the woman he married under his mother's influence.

There were so many people present that it was some time before he could
get up to them, and by that time he had recovered himself.

"Lance," cried Lady Chandos, in a low voice, "see how fortunate I am; I
have been introduced to Madame Vanira."

Yes, his heart smote him again; it seemed so cruel to deceive her when
she was so kind, so gentle; she trusted in him so implicitly that it
seemed cruel to deceive her. She turned with a radiant face to Leone.

"Let me introduce my husband, Lord Chandos, to you, Madame Vanira," she
said, and they looked at each other for one moment as though they were
paralyzed.

Then the simple,