you," she said, with a vivid
blush, and so it was settled.

They forgot the dictates of honor; he forgot his duty to his wife at
home, and she forgot prudence and justice.

The morning dawned. She had eagerly watched for it through the long
hours of the night; it wakes her with the song of the birds and the
shine of the sun; it wakes her with a mingled sense of pain and
happiness, of pleasure and regret. She was to spend a whole day with
him, but the background to that happiness was that he was leaving a wife
at home who had all claims to his time and attention.

"One happy day before I die," she said to herself.

But will it be happy? The sun will shine brightly, yet there will be a
background; yet it shall be happy because it will be with him.

It was yet early in the morning when she drove to the appointed place at
the river side. The sun shone in the skies, the birds sang in the trees,
the beautiful river flashed and glowed in the light, the waters seemed
to dance and the green leaves to thrill.

Ah, if she were but back by the mill-stream, if she were but Leone Noel
once again, with her life all unspoiled before her; if she were anything
on earth except a woman possessed by a mad love. If she could but
exchange these burning ashes of a burning love for the light, bright
heart of her girlhood, when the world had been full of beauty which
spoke to her in an unknown tongue.

God had been so good to her; he had given to her the beauty of a queen,
genius that was immortal, wit, everything life holds most fair, and they
were all lost to her because of her mad love. Ah, well, never mind, the
sun was shining, the river dancing far away in the sun, and she was to
spend the day with him. She had dressed herself to perfection in a
close-fitting dress of dark-gray velvet, relieved by ribbons of rose
pink; she wore a hat with a dark-gray plume, under the shade of which
her beautiful face looked doubly bewitching; the little hands, which by
their royal gestures swayed multitudes, were cased in dark gray. Lord
Chandos looked at her in undisguised admiration.

"The day seems to have been made on purpose for us," he said, as he
helped her in the boat.

Leone laughed, but there was just the least tinge of bitterness in that
laugh.

"A day made for us would have gray skies, cold rains, and bleak, bitter
winds," she said.

And then the pretty pleasure boat floated away on the broad, beautiful
stream.

It was a day on w