the viscount, face and voice, expressionless.

"They were made for each other," her ladyship opined.

"Were they so?"

"Ay--were they. And faith they've discovered it. I would you had seen
the turtles in the arbor an hour ago, when I surprised them."

His lordship attempted a smile, but achieved nothing more than a wry
face and a change of color. His mother's eyes, observing these signs,
grew on a sudden startled.

"Why, fool," quoth she, "do you hold there still? Art not yet cured of
that folly?"

"What folly, ma'am?"

"This folly that already has cost you so much. 'Sdeath! As I'm a woman,
if you'd so much feeling for the girl, I marvel ye did not marry her
honestly and in earnest when the chance was yours."

The pallor of his face increased. He clenched his hands. "I marvel
myself that I did not," he answered passionately--and went out, slamming
the door after him, and leaving her ladyship agape and angry.

CHAPTER XV. LOVE AND RAGE

Lord Rotherby, descending from that interview with his mother, espied
Hortensia crossing the hall below. Forgetting his dignity, he quickened
his movements, and took the remainder of the stairs two at a stride.
But, then, his lordship was excited and angry, and considerations of
dignity did not obtain with him at the time. For that matter, they
seldom did.

"Hortensia! Hortensia!" he called to her, and at his call she paused.

Not once during the month that was past--and during which he had,
for the most part, kept his room, to all intents a prisoner--had she
exchanged so much as a word with him. Thus, not seeing him, she had been
able, to an extent, to exclude him from her thoughts, which, naturally
enough, were reluctant to entertain him for their guest.

Her calm, as she paused now in acquiescence to his bidding, was such
that it almost surprised herself. She had loved him once--or thought
so, a little month ago--and at a single blow he had slain that love. Now
love so slain has a trick of resurrecting in the guise of hate; and so,
she had thought at first had been the case with her. But this moment
proved to her now that her love was dead, indeed, since of her erstwhile
affection not even a recoil to hate remained. Dislike she may have felt;
but it was that cold dislike that breeds a deadly indifference, and
seeks no active expression, asking no more than the avoidance of its
object.

Her calm, reflected in her face of a beauty almost spiritual, in every
ste