The evil we most abhor generally espies us afar off, chases tirelessly, crouches at our feet, grimacing triumphantly at our impotence to escape its loathsome clutches; and Leo’s pride bled sorely in the realization that she had sold her hand and heart for base counterfeit equivalents.  In a crisis of keen disappointment, only very noble natures can remain strictly just, yet in arraigning her lover for disloyalty, this sorrowing woman abstained from casting all the blame upon him.  He had not intentionally deceived her, had not deliberately betrayed her trust; he was the unwilling victim of an inexplicable fascination against which she felt assured he had struggled sullenly and persistently; and which, in destroying the beautiful edifice of their mutual hopes, offered him nothing but humiliation in exchange.

Standing to-day beside the pyramid of scarlet geraniums, and velvety, gold-powdered begonias in the centre of the octagonal room, where the warm Spring sun shone down through the dome, falling aslant on the great snowy owl and the rose-colored cockatoo smoothing their plumes on the top of the glittering brass cages—­Leo contrasted the luxurious and elegant details of her lovely home with the grim and bleak cell where, in shame and ignominy, dwelt the young stranger who had stolen her throne.  A beggar by the road-side had filched from the queen in her palace, her crown and sceptre, and the pomp and splendor of royal surroundings only mocked and emphasized an empty sham.  Merely a trifle paler than usual, and somewhat heavy-eyed from acquaintance with midnight vigils, she proudly bore her new burden of grief with her wonted easy grace; but the pretty mouth was compressed into harder, narrower lines, and the delicate nose dilated in a haughtier curve.  Sooner or later we all learn the wisdom of the unwelcome admonition:  “Fortune sells what we believe she gives.”

For two months Leo’s relations with Mr. Dunbar had been distinctly strained, and while both carefully avoided any verbal attempt at explanation, her manner had grown more distant, his more scrupulously courteous, but pre-occupied, guarded and cold.  Knowing that abdication was inevitable, she slowly revolved the best method of release, which promised the least sacrifice of womanly dignity, and the greatest economy of unpleasantness on the part of her betrothed.

During the week of the trial, she had seen him but twice, and immediately after he had been summoned to attend some suit in New Orleans, and had hurriedly bidden her adieu in the presence of others.  With punctilious regularity he wrote studiedly polished, graceful yet merely friendly letters, and like ice morsels they slowly widened the glacier creeping between the two.