It was a dark November evening when she met her fate. The Altais were in Scotland, entertaining a party of friends for the covert shooting in Lord Westray’s splendid Wigtownshire preserves. The guests had all arrived but one, and he put in an appearance when the remainder of the party had gone upstairs to dress for dinner. Lady Altai had waited for him, as he was momentarily expected, and on his arrival he had been ushered into the drawing-room. His name was Harry Kintore, a captain in a smart marching regiment. As she entered the drawing-room he was standing with his back to the fire, and their eyes met. Right through her ran a thrill, she knew not why or wherefore, while he, transfixed by her beauty, could not remove his eyes. There have been such cases before of love at first sight. This was a case about which there could be no dispute; both felt it was so, both knew it to be beyond recall. How she struggled against her fate none can tell. With her husband’s increased brutality the gentleness and devotion of young Kintore was all the more _en evidence_. And when at length he bade her fly with him beyond the reach of so much misery and cruelty, was it a wonder that she succumbed, and flew in the face of the law that bound her to the contrary? She left him, that cruel brute, who had made her life a desert and a hell. She left him for one who to her was chivalrous and tender, loving and sympathetic. The world cried shame upon her, and spoke of Lord Altai as an injured man; the world ostracised her while it courted anew the fiend who had so grievously wronged her. And when, in the hunger of his baffled passion, this pampered _roué_ followed the two who had fled from him, and with cold-blooded cruelty shot dead young Harry Kintore, the world declared it could not blame him, and that it served Lady Altai right. [Illustration] CHAPTER II. “Good-morning, my dear,” exclaims Lady Manderton, as she enters the cosy boudoir of her bosom friend and confidante, Mrs. de Lacy Trevor, as this latter, in a neat _peignoir_, lies stretched out, novel in hand, on an easy couch overlooking the fast-filling street of Piccadilly about eleven o’clock on the morning of the 5th June, 1890. “Ciel! my dear, what brings you here, and dressed, too, at this unearthly hour?” “Chute, Vivi, don’t talk so loud. A mere rencontre, that’s all. Arthur and I have arranged a little lark, and I told him to meet me here. I knew you wouldn’t mind.” “He, he!” giggles Vivi; “but what have you done with Man?” “Oh! he’s safe enough, my dear. Gone off to his club. Thinks I’ve gone to get a gown tried on. He, he! What fools men are!”