"Let me speak seriously to you, Lance," said the countess. "Marion is so unhappy that I should not wonder if she were really ill over it; now why not do as she wishes? Madame Vanira can be nothing to you--Marion is everything. Why not give her up?" A certain look of settled determination that came to her son's face made the countess pause and wonder. She had seen it there for the first and last time when she had asked her son to renounce his young wife, and now she saw it again. Strange that his next words should seem like an answer to her thoughts. "Mother," he said, "do not ask me; you persuaded me to give up all the happiness of my life, years ago--do not try me a second time. I refuse, absolutely refuse, to gratify my wife's foolish, jealous wish. I say, emphatically, that I will not give up my friendship for Madame Vanira." Then my lady looked fixedly at him. "Lance," she said, "what is Madame Vanira to you?" He could not help the flush that burned his handsome, angry face, and that flush aroused his mother's curiosity. "Have you known her long? Did you know her before your marriage, Lance? I remember now that I was rather struck by her manner. She reminds me forcibly of some one. Poor Marion declares there is some tie between you. What can it be?" She mused for some minutes, then looked into her son's face. "Great Heaven, Lance, it can never be!" she cried. "A horrible idea has occurred to me, and yet it is not possible." He made no answer, but a look of more dogged defiance came into his face. "It can never be, and yet I think it is so. Can it be possible that Madame Vanira is the--the dairy-maid to whom you gave your young affections?" "Madame Vanira is the girl I loved, mother, and whom I believed to be my wife--until you parted us." And my lady fell back in her carriage with a low cry of "Heaven have mercy on us!" CHAPTER LV. "WAR TO THE KNIFE."