166--The Masked Bridal By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon 168--Thrice Lost, Thrice Won By May Agnes Fleming 174--His Guardian Angel By Charles Garvice 177--A True Aristocrat By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon 181--The Baronet’s Bride By May Agnes Fleming 188--Dorothy Arnold’s Escape By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon 199--Geoffrey’s Victory By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon 203--Only One Love By Charles Garvice 210--Wild Oats By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon 213--The Heiress of Egremont By Mrs. Harriet Lewis 215--Only a Girl’s Love By Charles Garvice 219--Lost: A Pearle By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon 222--The Lily of Mordaunt By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon 223--Leola Dale’s Fortune By Charles Garvice 231--The Earl’s Heir By Charles Garvice (Lady Norah) 233--Nora By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon 236--Her Humble Lover By Charles Garvice (The Usurper; or, The Gipsy Peer) 242--A Wounded Heart By Charles Garvice (Sweet as a Rose) 244--A Hoiden’s Conquest By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon The Breath of Slander; OR, Virtue Triumphs BY IDA READE ALLEN AUTHOR OF “The Man and His Millions,” “A Forced Promise,” “Told in the Twilight,” “From Tears to Smiles.” [Illustration] STREET & SMITH CORPORATION PUBLISHERS 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York Copyright, 1899 GEORGE MUNRO’S SONS The Breath of Slander (Printed in the United States of America) THE BREATH OF SLANDER. CHAPTER I. A MOUNTAIN STORM. It was a warm spring day--an oppressively warm day--although the stormy month of March was not half gone, and the snow still lingered in the hollows and around the roots of the scrub oaks where the warm rays of the sun could not reach it. March had come in like a lamb, and here it was the fourteenth day of that usually boisterous month, and there had not been a stormy or disagreeable day yet. It was a wonderfully early spring--quite unprecedented. Even those chronic liars, “the oldest inhabitants,” could not remember a warmer one. So they sat around the village store, while they droned about the hot summers and cold winters they had seen, being content to let the present season alone as being beyond even their fertile imaginations.