He was engaged, and he was very much in love with his cousin. That two years' interval between their ages gave Gwendoline an immense advantage over her lover; she practised a thousand feminine coquetries upon this simple generous lad, and was proud of her power over him, and very fond of him after her own fashion, which was not a very warm one. She was by no means a woman to consider the world well lost for love. Her father had told her all about Roland's circumstances, and that the settlements would be very handsome. She was only sorry that poor Roland was a mere nobody, after all; a country gentleman, who prided himself upon the length of his pedigree and the grandeur of his untitled race; but whose name looked very insignificant when you saw it at the tail of a string of dukes and marquises in the columns of the "Morning Post." But then he might distinguish himself in Parliament. There was something in that; and Lady Gwendoline brought all her power to bear upon the young man's career. She fanned the faint flames of his languid ambition with her own fiery breath. This girl, with her proud Saxon beauty, her cold blue eyes, her pale auburn hair, was as ardent and energetic as Joan of Arc or Elizabeth of England. She was a grand ambitious creature, and she wanted to marry a ruler, and to rule him; and she was discontented with her cousin because a crown did not drop on to his brows the moment he entered the arena. His speeches had been talked about; but, oh, what languid talk it had been! Gwendoline wanted all Europe to vibrate with the clamour of the name that was so soon to be her own. At the end of his second session Roland went abroad with his dying mother. He came back alone, six weeks after his mother's death, and went straight to Gwendoline for consolation. He found her in deep mourning; all a-glitter with bracelets and necklaces of shining jet; looking very fair and stately in her trailing black robes; but he found her drawing-room filled with callers, and he left her wounded and angry. He thought her so much a part of himself, that he had expected to find her grief equal to his own. He went to her again, in a passionate outbreak of grief and anger; told her that she was cold-hearted and ungrateful, and that she had never loved the aunt who had been almost a mother to her. Lady Gwendoline was the last woman in the world to submit to any such reproof. She was astounded by her lover's temerity. "I loved my aunt very dearly, Mr. Lansdell," she said; "so dearly that I could endure a great deal for her sake; but I can _not_ endure the insolence of her son." And then the Earl of Ruysdale's daughter swept out of the room, leaving her cousin standing alone in a sunlit window, with the spring breezes blowing in upon him, and the shrill voice of a woman crying primroses sounding in the street below.