"Lady Wyndward," he said; and his clear, musical voice was just audible to those around, "your daughter has been too gracious to her devoted adherents, and tired herself in the mazy dance. I resign her to your maternal care." Stella would have shrunk back, but the countess, who knew what was due to royalty, rose and took the fair, round arm in her matronly one. "Come," she said, "his royal highness is right--you must rest." All in a dream, Stella allowed herself to be led into a shaded recess, all fresh with ferns and exotica. Then she woke, and murmuring-- "Thank you," was for flying; but the countess held out her arms suddenly, and for the first time--well, for many years--burst into tears, not noisy sobbing, but quiet, flooding tears. "Oh, my dear!" she murmured, brokenly. "Forgive me! I am only a proud, wicked old woman!" Stella was in her arms in an instant, and thus Leycester found them. When old Lady Longford heard of this scene, she was immensely amused in her cynical way. "It would have served you right my dear," she told the countess, "if she had turned round and said, 'Yes, you are a very wicked old woman,' and walked off." So Stella's cup of happiness was full to the brim. It is not empty yet, and will not be while Love stands with upraised hand to replenish it. She is a girl still, even now that there is a young Leycester to run about the old man's studio and upset the pictures and add to the litter, and it is the old painter's oft expressed opinion that she will be a girl to the end of the chapter. "Stella, you see," he is fond of remarking, whenever he hears her sweet voice carolling about the little cottage--and it is as often heard there as at the Hall--"Stella, you see, was born in Italy, and Italians--good Italians--never grow old. They manage to keep a heart alive in their bosoms and laughter on their lips at a period when people of colder climes are gloomy and morosely composing their own epitaphs. There is one comfort for you, Leycester, you have got a wife who will never grow old." [THE END.] Great Stories by a Great Author _The New Fiction Series_ ISSUED QUARTERLY Letters of congratulation have been showered upon us from all over the country by enthusiastic readers who say that had we not announced that Mr. Cook wrote all of these stories, it would have been very difficult to determine it. The reason is that Mr. Cook is a widely traveled man and has, therefore, been enabled to lay the plot of one of his stories in the "land of little rain," another on the high seas, another in Spain and Spanish America, and to write a railroad story that a reader of thirty years' experience decided must have been written by a veteran railroad man. If stories of vigorous adventure are wanted, stories that are drawn true to life and give that thrill which all really good fiction ought to give, the books listed here are what you want. _ALL TITLES ALWAYS IN PRINT_