risk the love and happiness of your wife, to
risk your fair name, the name of your race, your position, and
everything else that you ought to hold most dear? Do you think it worth
while to risk all this for the sake of spending three months in Berlin,
where you can see Madame Vanira every day?"

Lord Chandos looked straight in his mother's face.

"Since you ask me the question," he replied, "most decidedly I do."

My lady shrunk back as though she had received a blow.

"I am ashamed of you," she said.

"And I, mother, have been ashamed of my cowardice; but I am a coward no
longer."

"Are tears and prayers of any avail?" asked Lady Lanswell; and the
answer was:

"No."

Then my lady, driven to despair between her son and his wife, resolved
some evening to seek the principal cause of the mischief--Madame Vanira
herself.

CHAPTER LVII.

A PROUD WOMAN HUMBLED.

The Countess of Lanswell had never in all her life been defeated before;
now all was over, and she went home with a sense of defeat such as she
had never known before. Her son refused not only to obey her, but to
listen to her remonstrances; he would not take heed of her fears, and my
lady saw nothing but social disgrace before them. Her own life had been
so crowned with social triumphs and success she could not realize or
understand anything else. The one grand desire of her heart since her
son's marriage had been that he should become a Knight of the Order of
the Garter, and now, by the recent death of a famous peer, the desire
was on the eve of accomplishment; but if, on the very brink of success,
it were known that he had left all his duties, his home, his wife, to
dance attendance on a singer, even though she were the first singer in
Europe, it would be fatal to him. It would spoil his career. My lady had
carried herself proudly among the mothers of other sons; hers had been a
success, while some others had proved, after all, dead failures; was she
to own to herself at the end of a long campaign that she was defeated?
Ah, no! Besides which there was the other side of the question--Lady
Marion declared she would not see him or speak to him again if he went
to Berlin, and my lady knew that she would keep her word. If Lord
Chandos persisted in going to Berlin his wife would appeal to the duke,
would in all probability insist on taking refuge in his house, then
there would be a grand social scandal; the whole household would be
disbanded. Lady