“My lord,” he said, “will you forgive me if I speak plainly? Englishmen best understand brief words. I have loved your daughter, Lady Hermione, all my life. Some years since a fatal and inexplicable mistake parted us. I thought she was to blame; she believed the fault mine, and the consequences were estrangement. I pray my dead wife’s pardon if I say I married her from pique, not love. Now the fatal mistake is cleared away, and I am here as a suitor for your daughter’s hand. If you can forgive me and welcome me as such, I am, in truth, a happy man; if you cannot, tell me my fate briefly. I am used to suffering and can bear it.” The only answer Lord Lorriston made was to take the thin, white hands in his own and bid him thrice welcome to Leeholme. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE MORNING BRIGHTNESS. Would any one recognize gloomy Aldenmere in the bright, sunny place where perpetual summer seems to reign? Would any one believe this to be the home where the dark shadow of murder had fallen? In all the merry land of England there is not another home so bright and fair. The tall trees that made gloom, where gloom should not have been, were all cut down, blooming flowers showed their sweet faces everywhere, the desolate state-rooms, closed since that fatal morning when Lady Clarice had been carried home dead, were all furnished with the utmost magnificence, and people said the _fêtes_ given at Aldenmere rivaled those given by royalty itself, they were so magnificent and on so vast a scale. No more complaints were heard that the chief house in the country was closed, and desolate Sir Ronald seemed as though he could not do enough to atone for the gloomy desolation he had allowed to fall on all around him. For he has prospered in his wooing. Lady Hermione had been very good to him--perhaps the traces of most bitter sorrow on his face had touched her with sweet, womanly compassion, she whose great charm had been piquant, varied moods, the brilliant power of repartee, whose very uncertainties and caprices had been full of grace because she was the sweetest and most gentle of women. Had everything prospered from the first, and no cloud ever have arisen between them, the chances are that Sir Ronald’s wooing would have been a different matter; she would have enjoyed giving him a love chase. But now all that pretty, feminine, graceful coquetry had left her. Her sole wish and desire seemed to be to make him forget all he had suffered, and devote herself to his happiness and welfare. On that eventful day when Sir Ronald had gone to Leeholme, and had won the earl’s consent to his wooing, he did not leave the place until he had her promise. Lord Lorriston had assured him of his free forgiveness, and how perfectly he understood his conduct. Then Sir Ronald had asked to see Lady Hermione. “I could not go from Leeholme in suspense again,” he said; and Lord Lorriston told him his daughter was engaged in what was known as the “cedar-room.”