Lord Hartfield rented a chateau on the slope of an olive-clad hill, where he and his young wife, whose health was somewhat delicate at this time, spent a winter in peaceful seclusion; while Lesbia and her brother travelled together in Italy.  The old man’s strength improved in that lovely climate.  He lived to see the roses and orange blossoms of the early spring, and died in his arm-chair suddenly, without a pang, while Mary sat at his feet reading to him:  a quiet end of an evil and troubled life.  And now he whom the world had known as Lord Maulevrier was verily the earl, and could hear himself called by his title once more without a touch of shame.

The secret of Lady Maulevrier’s sin had been so faithfully kept by the two young men that neither of her granddaughters knew the true story of that mysterious person whom Mary had first heard of as James Steadman’s uncle.  She and Lesbia both knew that there were painful circumstances of some kind connected with this man’s existence, his hidden life in the old house at Fellside; but they were both content to learn no more.  Respect for their grandmother’s memory, sorrowful affection for the dead, prevailed over natural curiosity.

Early in February Maulevrier sent decorators and upholsterers into the old house in Curzon Street, which was ready before the middle of May to receive his lordship and his young wife, the girlish daughter of a Florentine nobleman, a gazelle-eyed Italian, with a voice whose every tone was music, and with the gentlest, shyest, most engaging manners of any girl in Florence.  Lady Lesbia, strangely subdued and changed by the griefs and humiliations of her last campaign, had been her brother’s counsellor and confidante throughout his wooing of his fair Italian bride.  She was to spend the season under her brother’s roof, to help to initiate young Lady Maulevrier in the mysterious rites of London society, and to warn her of those rocks and shoals which had wrecked her own fortunes.

The month of May brought a son and heir to Lord Hartfield; and it was not till after his birth that Mary, Countess of Hartfield, was presented to her sovereign, and began her career as a matron of rank and standing, very much overpowered by the weight of her honours, and looking forward with delight to the end of the season and a flight to Argyleshire with her husband and baby.

THE END.