‘It was her very innocence which made her a victim to that scoundrel,’ said Smithson, ’her girlish simplicity and Lady Kirkbank’s folly.  But I love your sister too well to sacrifice her lightly, Lord Maulevrier; and if she can forget this midsummer madness, why, so can I.’

‘She cannot forget, Mr. Smithson,’ answered Maulevrier, gravely.  ’She has done you a great wrong by listening to your false friend’s addresses; but she did you a still greater wrong when she accepted you as her husband without one spark of love for you.  She and you are both happy in having escaped the degradation, the deep misery of a loveless union.  I am glad—­yes, glad even of this shameful escapade with Montesma—­though it has dragged her good name through the gutter,—­glad of the catastrophe that has saved her from such a marriage.  You are very generous in your willingness to forget my sister’s folly.  Let your forgetfulness go a step further, and forget that you ever met her.’

‘That cannot be, Lord Maulevrier.  She has ruined my life.’

‘Not at all.  An affair of a season,’ answered Maulevrier, lightly.  ’Next year I shall hear of you as the accepted husband of some new beauty.  A man of Mr. Smithson’s wealth—­and good nature—­need not languish in single blessedness.’

With this civil speech Lord Maulevrier went back to the Philomel’s gig, and this was his last meeting with Mr. Smithson, until they met a year later in the beaten tracks of society.

CHAPTER XLV.

‘THAT FELL ARREST, WITHOUT ALL BAIL.’

It was the beginning of August before Lesbia was pronounced equal to the fatigue of a long journey; and even then it was but the shadow of her former self which returned to Fellside, the pale spectre of joys departed, of trust deceived.

Maulevrier had been very good to her, patient, unselfish as a woman, in his ministering to the broken-hearted girl.  That broken heart would be whole again, no doubt, in the future, as many other broken hearts have been; but the grief, the despair, the sense of hopelessness and aimlessness in life were very real in the present.  If the picturesque seclusion of Fellside had seemed dull and joyless to Lesbia in days gone by, it was much duller to her now.  She was shocked at the change in her grandmother, and she showed a good deal of feeling and affection in her intercourse with the invalid; but once out of her presence Lady Maulevrier was forgotten, and Lesbia’s thoughts drifted back into the old current.  They dwelt obstinately, unceasingly upon Montesma, the man whose influence had awakened the slumbering soul from its torpor, had stirred the deeps of a passionate nature.

Slave-dealer, gambler, adventurer, liar—­his name blackened by the suspicion of a still darker crime.  She shuddered at the thought of the villain from whose snare she had been rescued:  and yet, his image as he had been to her in the brief golden time when she believed him noble, and chivalrous, and true, haunted her lonely days, mixed itself with her troubled dreams, came between her and every other thought.