"You appear in a new light every day, Lenore," he said. "If you had expressed my own thoughts and desires, you could not have hit them off more exactly; what will the mother say?" The countess had a great deal to say about the matter. She declared that it was absurd, that it was worse than absurd; it was preposterous. "It is all very well to talk of a farmer's daughter, my dear, but you are not a farmer's daughter; you are Lady Lenore Beauchamp, and he is the next earl. The world will say you have both taken leave of your senses." Lenore looked at her with a sudden gleam in her violet eyes. "Do you think I care?" she said, in a low voice--Leycester was not present. "I would not care whether we were married in Westminster Abbey, by the archbishop himself, with all the Court in attendance, or in a village chapel. It is not I, though I say so. It is for him. Say no more about it, dear Lady Wyndward; his lightest wish is law to me." And the countess obeyed. The passionate devotion of the haughty beauty astonished even her, who knew something of what a woman's love can be capable of. "My dear," she murmured, "do not give way too much." The beauty smiled a strange smile. "It is not a question of giving way," she retorted, with suppressed emotion. "It is simply that his wish is my law; I have but to obey--it will always be so, always." Then she slipped down beside the countess, and looked up with a sudden pallor. "Do you not understand yet how I love him?" she said, with a smile. "No, I do not think anyone can understand but myself--but myself!" The earl offered no remonstrance or objection. "What does it matter!" he said. "The place is of no consequence. The marriage is the thing. The day Leycester is married, a heavy load of care and apprehension and I shall be divorced. Let them be married where they like, in Heaven's name." So Harbor and Harbor were set to work, and the principal of that old-established and aristocratic firm came all the way down to Devonshire, and was closeted with the earl for a couple of hours, and the settlement deeds were put in hand. Lady Lenore's fortune, which was a large one, was to be settled upon herself, supplemented by another large fortune from the hand of the earl. So large, that the lawyer ventured on a word of remonstrance, but the earl put it aside with a wave of the hand. "It is the same amount as that which was settled upon the countess," he said. "Why should my son's wife have less?" Quiet as the betrothal had been, and quietly as the nuptials were to be, rumors had spread, and presents were arriving daily. If Lenore could have found any particular pleasure in precious gems, and gold-fitted dressing-bags, and ivory prayer-books, there they were in endless variety for her delight, but they afforded her none beyond the fact of their being evidence of her coming happiness.