"What would it do to you?" asked Leone, slightly startled. "A really great trouble," replied Lady Chandos, musingly, "what would it do for me? Kill me. I have known so little of it; I cannot indeed remember what could be called trouble." "You have been singularly fortunate," said Leone, half enviously. And the fair face of the Queen of Blondes grew troubled. "Perhaps," she said, "all my troubles are to come. I should not like to believe that." She was quite silent for some few minutes, then, with a sigh, she said: "You have made me feel nervous, and I cannot tell why. What trouble could come to me? So far as I see, humanly speakingly, none. No money troubles could reach me; sickness would hardly be a trouble if those I loved were round me. Ah, well, that is common to every one." A look of startled intelligence came over her face. "I know one, and only one source of trouble," she said; "that would be if anything happened to Lord Chandos, to--to my husband; if he did not love me, or I lost him." She sighed as she uttered the last words, and the heart of the gifted singer was touched by the noblest, kindest pity; she looked into the fair, flower-like face. "You love your husband then?" she said, with a gentle, caressing voice. "Love him," replied Lady Chandos, her whole soul flashing in her eyes--"love him? Ah, that seems to me a weak word! My husband is all the world, all life to me. It is strange that I should speak to you, a stranger, in this manner; but, as I told you before, my heart warms to you in some fashion that I do not myself understand. I am not like most people. I have so few to love. No father, no mother, no sisters, or brothers. I have no one in the wide world but my husband; he is more to me than most husbands are to most wives--he is everything." Leone looked down on that fair, sweet face with loving eyes; the very depths of her soul were touched by those simple words; she prayed God that she might always remember them. There was infinite pathos in her voice and in her face when she said: "You are very happy, then, with your husband, Lady Marion?" "Yes, I am very happy," said the young wife, simply. "My husband loves me, I have no rivals, no jealousies, no annoyances; I may say I am perfectly happy." "I pray God that you may always be so!" said Leone, gently. And with an impulse she could not resist she bent down and kissed the sweet face. Then Lady Chandos looked up. "I am afraid," she said, "that our pleasant five minutes' chat is ended. We must go back to the ballroom. I am afraid all your admirers will be very angry with me, Madame Vanira." "That is a matter of perfect indifference?" she replied. "I know you better, Lady Marion, for those five minutes spent here than I should have done during a century in ballrooms." "And you promise that we shall always be friends," said the fair woman who called herself Lady Chandos.