"Who is 'Lenore,' uncle?" It was the evening of the same day--a day never to be forgotten by Stella, a day marked with a white stone in her mental calendar. Never would she be able to look upon a field of primroses, never hear the music of the river running over the weir, without remembering this morning the first she had spent with Lord Leycester. It was evening now, and the two--the painter and the girl--were sitting by the open window, looking out into the gloaming, he lost in memory, she going over and over again the incidents of the morning, from the visit of Mr. Jasper Adelstone to his encounter with Lord Leycester. It was strange, it was almost phenomenal--for Stella was frankness and candor itself--that she had said nothing of the encounter to her uncle; once or twice she had opened her lips--once at dinner, and once again as she sat beside him, leaning her arm on his chair while he smoked his pipe--she had opened her lips to tell him of that sudden outburst of fury on the part of Lord Leycester--that passionate rage which proved all that the painter had said of his hot temper to be true, but she had found some difficulty in the recital which had kept her silent. She had told him of her walk in the woods, had told him of her meeting with Lady Lilian, but of that passionate encounter between the two men she said nothing. When Jasper had ridden on, pale and livid with suppressed passion, Lord Leycester had stood looking at her in silence. Now, as she sat looking into the gloaming, she saw him in her mind's eye still, his beautiful eyes eloquent with remorse and humility, his clear-cut lip quivering with the sense of his weakness. "Will you forgive me?" he said, at last, and that was all. Without another word, he had offered to help her into the boat, help which Stella had disregarded, and had rowed her across to her uncle. Without a word, but with the same penitent, imploring look in his eyes, he raised his hat and left her--had gone home to the Hall, to his sister Lady Lilian, and to Lenore. Ever since she had heard the name drop softly from Lady Lilian's lips it had rung in her ears. There was a subtle kind of charm about it that half fascinated, half annoyed her. And now, leaning her head on her arm, and with her dark eyes fixed on the stars which glittered merrily in the sky, she put the question: "Who is Lenore, uncle?" He stirred in his chair and looked at her absently. "Lenore, Lenore? I don't know, Stella, and yet the name sounds familiar. Where did you hear it? It's scarcely fair to spring a question like that on me; you might ask me who is Julia, Louisa, Anna Maria----" Stella laughed softly. "I heard it this morning, uncle. Lady Lilian told her brother as she left us that 'Lenore had come.'" "Ah, yes," he said. "Now I know. So she has come, has she? Who is Lenore?" and he smiled. "There is scarcely another woman in England who would need to ask that question, Stella."