"I have no ambition, no hope for you, Lance. You have taken your wife from a dairy--the most I can hope is that you may learn to be a good judge of milk." He turned from her with a hot flush of anger on his face. Yet the sharp, satirical shaft found its way to his heart. He thought of the words and brooded over them--they made more impression on him than any others had done. In his mother's mind he had evidently lost his place in the world's race, never to regain it. The duke--who knew nothing of the conspiracy, and knew nothing of the young lord's story, except that he had involved himself in some tiresome dilemma from which his parents had rescued him--the Duke of Lester, who heard Lord Chandos spoken of as one likely to marry his niece, took a great fancy to him; he had no children of his own; he was warmly attached to his beautiful niece; it seemed very probable that if Lord Chandos married Lady Erskine, he would have before him one of the most brilliant futures that could fall to any man's lot. Many people hinted at it, and constant dropping wears away a stone. The last and perhaps the greatest hold that the countess had over her son was the evident liking of Lady Marion for him. In this, as in everything else, she was most diplomatic; she never expressed any wish that he should marry her; but she had a most sympathetic manner of speaking about her. "I doubt, Lance," she said one day, "whether we have done wisely--at least whether I have done wisely--in allowing Lady Marion to see so much of you; she is so sweet and so gentle--I am quite distressed about it." "Why, mother? I see no cause for distress," he said, abruptly. "No, my dear; men all possess the happy faculty of never seeing that which lies straight before their eyes. It is one of their special gifts--you have it to perfection." "Do speak out what you mean, mother; that satire of yours puzzles me. What do I not see that I ought to see?" "Nothing very particular. What I mean is this, Lance, that I am almost afraid Lady Marion has been too much with us for her peace of mind. I think, when you go back to England on this wild-goose chase of yours, that she will feel it deeply." He looked anxiously at her. "Do you, mother, really think that?" he asked. "I do, indeed. Of course I know, Lance, no words of mine will ever avail; but it seems to me you are in this position--if you leave Lady Marion and return to your pretty dairy-maid that Lady Marion will never be happy again. If you marry Lady Marion and dower that young person with a good fortune she will marry some one in her own rank of life and be much happier than she could be with you." "Ah, mother," he said, sadly, "you do not know Leone."