said Lady Carruthers; "never mind
your traveling-dress; Miss Hautville and I are quite alone."

No one who saw Lady Carruthers leave the library with stately step and
dignified air, would have believed that she had received a blow which
laid her life and all her hopes in ruins--as the lightning smites the
lofty oak. She went back to her sumptuous bedroom that she had left half
an hour ago, so calm and serene, so unconscious of coming evil. Looking
in the mirror, she saw her face was deadly pale--there was no trace of
color left on it, and deep lines had come on her brow that had been so
calm.

"It will not do to look so pale," said Lady Carruthers; and from one of
the mysterious little drawers she took a small powder puff that soon
remedied the evil.

Then she went to the dining-room. Miss Hautville and Mr. Forster were
talking together like old acquaintances, and the three sat down to
dinner together.

Mr. Forster was, as he himself often said, a grim old lawyer, without
any poetry or romance, but even he could not sit opposite the pale, pure
loveliness of Marion Hautville unmoved; there was something about her
that reminded one irresistibly of starlight, delicate, graceful, holy
veiled loveliness. She was slender and graceful, with a figure that was
charming now, but that promised, in years to come, to be superb; the
same promise of magnificent womanhood was in the lovely delicate face.
The pure profile, the delicate brows, the shining hair, braided Madonna
fashion, were all beautiful, but looking at her, one realized there was
greater beauty to come.

She looked across the table with a smile.

"And now, Mr. Forster, you have told me how London looks; tell me
something about my cousin, Mr. Carruthers."

He made some indifferent answer, and as he did so, he thought to
himself:

"Can it be possible, that with a chance of winning this lovely girl--one
of the richest heiresses in London--that Basil Carruthers has given his
heart to some worthless creature, who has spent his money and helped him
to prison?"

A question that, if our readers will kindly follow us, we will answer in
the succeeding chapters.

CHAPTER VI.

Youth Full of Beauty and Promise.

There was no man of greater note in England than the late Royston
Carruthers, Esq., Lord of the Manor of Rutsford. He was one of the
ablest statesmen and finest orators in England. He had been returned for
the Borough of Rutsford for many years, with