So Clide lapses into silence again, and for a time we lose sight of him. He is roving about the world, doing his best to kill pain by excitement, and soothe memory with hope; and all this while a new life is getting ready for him, growing and blossoming, and patiently waiting for the summer-time, when the fruit shall be ripe for him to come and gather it. The spot which this new life has chosen for its home is suggestive rather of the past than of the future. A tiny brick cottage, with a thatched roof overgrown with mosses green and brown, a quaint remnant of old-fashioned life, a bit of picturesque long ago forgotten on the skirts of the red-tiled, gas-lit, prosperous modern town of Dullerton. The little brick box, smothered in its lichens and mosses, was called The Lilies from a band of those majestic flowers that dwelt on either side of the garden-wicket, like guardian angels of the place, looking out in serene beauty on the world without. It was a nine days’ wonder to Dullerton when the Comte Raymond de la Bourbonais and his daughter Franceline came from over the seas, and took up their abode at The Lilies with a French _bonne_ called Angélique. There was the usual amount of guessing amongst the gossips as to the why and the wherefore a foreign nobleman should have selected such a place as Dullerton, when, as was affirmed by those who knew all about it, he had all the world before him to choose from. The only person who could have thrown light upon the mystery was Sir Simon Harness, the lord of the manor of Dullerton. But Sir Simon was not considerate enough to do so; he was even so perverse as to set the gossips on an entirely wrong scent for some time; and it was not until the count and his daughter had become familiar objects to the neighborhood that the reason of their presence there transpired.