“Ah, Miss Severn,” said Sir Ronald, gayly, “some of the sweetest things in life are those that have no reason in them.” That was how and when the tragedy began. CHAPTER IX. KENELM EYRLE’S LOVE. Sir Ronald sang those words to himself as he rode back home, the face of Lady Hermione before him all the way, her voice in his ears, the glad sunshine, the whispering leaves, the fragrant flowers, all seemed part of her. “The poet’s ideal woman, she is, indeed,” he said to himself; “she has brought every charming quality of her childhood into her beautiful womanhood. She is arch, dainty, piquant, tender, earnest; there are grand qualities in her. Sure as her eyes are stars and her lips roses, so sure has she a magnificent and noble nature but half developed yet.” The very glamor and madness of love was on him. It seemed to him that every leaf on the trees muttered her sweet name as he passed. “Hermione,” he repeated it. “Perhaps her beautiful, varied, lovely nature is owing to her name, of all Shakespeare’s heroines to my mind fairest and best.” He hardly remembered the existence of Clarice Severn; she was but Hermione’s friend. He did not even remember her delight at seeing him again. The proud, passionate beauty of her face had not moved him. “Strange that I should have loved Hermione best even as a child. I wish she were a child now, that I could hold her in my arms and kiss her and call her my own wife.” It was love, not exactly at first sight, for he had cared for her even when she was a child, but in the engrossing pursuits of traveling, in the excitement caused by his uncle’s illness and death, the image of the charming child had, in some measure, faded from his mind. When he saw her again the old love revived, and took fresh shape. It was no longer as a child, but as a woman, that he worshiped her. When Sir Ronald reached home he found an old friend there awaiting him, Kenelm Eyrle, of The Towers, with whom he had been both at Eton and Oxford. They had been almost like brothers together, coming from the same neighborhood and knowing the same people, having the same friends, and, in a great measure, the same tastes. One might have traveled far on a summer’s day and not have found a fairer-looking, more thoroughly admirable man than Kenelm Eyrle. He was three years older than his friend, and had traveled much. He united in himself the polish of a foreigner with the candor of an Englishman.