ind the air growing
chilly."

At that moment the ever-ready Sir Francis Lennox approached with a light
woolen wrap he had found in the hall.

"Permit me!" he said gently, at the same time adroitly throwing it over
Thelma's shoulders.

She colored a little,--she did not care for his attention, but she could
not very well ignore it without seeming to be discourteous. So she
murmured, "Thank you!" and, rising from her chair, addressed Lady
Winsleigh.

"If you feel cold, Clara, you will like some tea," she said. "Shall we
go indoors, where it is ready?"

Lady Winsleigh assented with some eagerness,--and the two, beautiful
women--the one dark, the other fair--walked side by side across the lawn
into the house, their arms round each other's waists as they went.

"Two queens--and yet not rivals?" half queried Lovelace, as he watched
them disappearing.

"Their thrones are secure!" returned Sir Philip gaily.

The others were silent. Lord Winsleigh's thoughts, whatever they were,
deepened the lines of gravity on his face; and George Lorimer, as he got
up from his couch on the grass, caught a fleeting expression in the
brown eyes of Sir Francis Lennox that struck him with a sense of
unpleasantness. But he quickly dismissed the impression from his mind,
and went to have a quiet smoke in the shrubbery.

CHAPTER XXIII.

"La rose du jardin, comme tu sais, dure peu, et la saison des roses est
bien vite ecoulee!"--SAADI.

Thelma took her friend Lady Winsleigh to her own boudoir, a room which
had been the particular pride of Sir Philip's mother. The walls were
decorated with panels of blue silk in which were woven flowers of gold
and silver thread,--and the furniture, bought from an old palace in
Milan, was of elaborately carved wood inlaid with ivory and silver. Here
a _tete-a-tete_ tea was served for the two ladies, both of whom were
somewhat fatigued by the pleasures of the day. Lady Winsleigh declared
she must have some rest, or she would be quite unequal to the gaieties
of the approaching evening, and Thelma herself was not sorry to escape
for a little from her duties as hostess,--so the two remained together
for some time in earnest conversations and Lady Winsleigh then and there
confided to Thelma what she had heard reported concerning Sir Philip's
intimate acquaintance with the burlesque actress, Violet Vere. And they
were both so long absent that, after a while, Errington began to miss
his wife, and, growi