nds away and clasped them on the top of her
head, proudly, as if she crowned herself thereby, her great and splendid
eyes setting themselves upon her sister's face.

"All that I do," she said slowly, and with the steadfast high arrogance
of an empress' self--"All that I do _is_ right--for me. I make it so by
doing it. Do you think that I am conquered by the laws that other women
crouch and whine before, because they dare not break them, though they
long to do so? _I_ am my own law--and the law of some others."

It was by this time the first month of the summer, and to-night there was
again a birth-night ball, at which the beauty was to dazzle all eyes; but
'twas of greater import than the one she had graced previously, it being
to celebrate the majority of the heir to an old name and estate, who had
been orphaned early, and was highly connected, counting, indeed, among
the members of his family the Duke of Osmonde, who was one of the richest
and most envied nobles in Great Britain, his dukedom being of the oldest,
his numerous estates the most splendid and beautiful, and the long
history of his family full of heroic deeds. This nobleman was also a
distant kinsman to the Earl of Dunstanwolde, and at this ball, for the
first time for months, Sir John Oxon appeared again.

He did not arrive on the gay scene until an hour somewhat late. But
there was one who had seen him early, though no human soul had known of
the event.

In the rambling, ill-cared for grounds of Wildairs Hall there was an old
rose-garden, which had once been the pride and pleasure of some lady of
the house, though this had been long ago; and now it was but a lonely
wilderness where roses only grew because the dead Lady Wildairs had loved
them, and Barbara and Anne had tended them, and with their own hands
planted and pruned during their childhood and young maiden days. But of
late years even they had seemed to have forgotten it, having become
discouraged, perchance, having no gardeners to do the rougher work, and
the weeds and brambles so running riot. There were high hedges and
winding paths overgrown and run wild; the stronger rose-bushes grew in
tangled masses, flinging forth their rich blooms among the weeds; such as
were more delicate, struggling to live among them, became more frail and
scant-blossoming season by season; a careless foot would have trodden
them beneath it as their branches grew long and trailed in the grass; but
for many mo