take the form of any other girl’s perversity?  Why can she not fall in love with some penniless younger son, or some dissipated captain in a marching regiment?  I am sure even under such circumstances I should not perform the part of the ‘cruel parent’ in the comedies!  I should say, ‘Bless you my children,’ with all my heart!  And I should enrich the impecunious young son, or reform the tipsy soldier.  Anything but the convent for my only child!” concluded the banker, with a sigh.

But Salome had ceased to think of the convent.  She thought now only of the missing marquis.

The offers of marriage that had been made to Salome, rejected though they were, had this good effect upon her mind.  They encouraged her to think more hopefully of herself.  Salome was too unworldly, too pure, and holy, to suspect that these offers had been made her from any other motive than personal preference.  It was possible, then, that she might be loved.  If other men preferred her, so also might he on whom she had fixed.  And now it had come to this with the dreaming girl—­she resolved to think no more of retiring to a convent, but to live in the world that contained her hero; to keep herself free from all engagements for his sake, to give herself to him, if possible, if not to give his land back to him some day, at least.  So in her secret soul she consecrated herself in a pure devotion to a man she had never seen, and who did not even know of her existence.

When Parliament rose at the end of the London season, Sir Lemuel Levison took his daughter on an extended Continental tour, showing her all the wonders of nature, and all the glories of art in countries and cities.  And Salome was interested and instructed, of course.  Yet the greatest value her travels had for her was in the possibility of their bringing her to a meeting with the missing heir.  It had been said that the mad duke and his son were somewhere on the Continent.  A wide field!  Yet, on the arrival of Sir Lemuel and Miss Levison at any city, Salome’s first thought was this: 

“Perhaps they are living here, and I shall see him.”

But she was always disappointed.  And at the end of a seven months’ sojourn on the Continent, Sir Lemuel Levison brought his daughter back to London, only in time for the meeting of Parliament.

Only two years of Salome’s probation was left—­only two more seasons in London.  Her father’s anxiety increased.

He sent for her chaperone again, and opened his house in Westbourne Terrace to all the world of fashion.  Again the young heiress was followed, flattered, feted as much as if she had been a beauty as well.  Again she received and rejected several eligible offers of marriage.  And so the second season passed.

Sir Lemuel Levison took his daughter to Scotland, and invited a large company to stay with them at Lone, thinking that, after all, more matches were made in the close daily intercourse of a country house, than in the crowded ball-rooms of a London season.