“We may see him in town,” said Louis, turning away with disappointment. “If you write, will you mention that I have been here to-night, to beg his counsel and friendship--I, Louis Rivers--” A sudden colour flushed over the young man’s face; he pronounced the name with a nervous firmness; it was the first time he had called himself by any save his baptismal name all his life. As they turned and walked home again, Louis relapsed into his first agitated consciousness, and did not care to say a word. Louis Rivers! lawful heir and only son of a noble English peer and an unsullied mother. It was little wonder if the young man’s heart swelled within him, too high for a word or a thought. He blotted out the past with a generous haste, unwilling to remember a single wrong done to him in the time of his humiliation, and looked out upon the future as upon a glorious vision, almost too wonderful to be realised: it was best to rest in this agitated moment of strange triumph, humility, and power, to convince himself that this was real, and to project his anticipations forward only with a generous anxiety for the concerns of others, with no question, when all questions were so overwhelming and incredible, after this extraordinary fortune of his own. CHAPTER XXVIII. AT HOME. It would not be easy to describe the state of mind of the feminine portion of this family which remained at home. Marian, in a strange and overpowering tumult--Marian, who was the first and most intimately concerned, her cheek burning still under the touch of her lover’s trembling lip in that second and more solemn betrothal, sat on a stool, half hidden by Miss Anastasia’s big chair and ample skirts, supporting her flushed cheeks on those pretty rose-tipped hands, to which the flush seemed to have extended, her beautiful hair drooping down among her fingers, her eyes cast down, her heart leaping like a bird against her breast. Her own vague suspicions, keen and eager as they were, had never pointed half so far as this. If it did not “turn her head” altogether, it was more because the little head was giddy with amaze and confusion, than from any virtue on the part of Marian. She was quite beyond the power of thinking; a strange brilliant extraordinary panorama glided before her--Louis in Bellevue--Louis at the Old Wood Lodge--Louis, the lord of all he looked upon, in Winterbourne Hall!