It may be that Lord Ruysdale's daughter hoped her cousin would return when he heard of the Marquis's death. She knew that Roland had loved her: and what was more likely than that he should come back to her, now that he knew she was once more free to be his wife? Lady Gwendoline kept the secrets of her own heart, and no one knew which of her two lovers had been dearest to her. She kept her own secrets; and, by-and-by, when she reappeared in the world, people saw that her beauty had suffered very little from her sorrow for her disappointment. She was still very handsome, but her prestige was gone. Impertinent young _débutantes_ of eighteen called this splendid creature of four-and-twenty "quite old." Wasn't she engaged to a Mr. Lansdell ever so long ago, and then to the Marquis of Heatherland? Poor thing, how very sad! They wondered she did not go over to Rome, or join Miss Sellon's sisterhood, or something of that kind. Lady Gwendoline's portrait still held its place in books of beauty, and she could see herself smiling in West-end printshops, with a preternaturally high forehead, and very long ringlets; but she felt that she was old--very old. Gossipping dowagers talked aristocratic scandal openly before her, and said, "We don't mind _your_ hearing it, Gwendoline dear, for of course you know the world, and that such things _do_ happen;" and a woman has seen the last of her youth when people say that sort of thing to her. She felt that she was very old. She had led a high-pressure kind of existence, in which a year stands for a decade; and now in her lonely old age she discovered that her father was very poor, and that his estates were mortgaged, and that henceforth her existence must be a wretched hand-to-mouth business, unless some distant relation, from whom Lord Ruysdale had expectations, would be good enough to die. The distant relation had died within the last twelve months, and the fortune inherited from him, though by no means a large one, had set the Earl's affairs tolerably straight; so he had returned to Lowlands, after selling the lease and furniture of his town-house. It was absurd to keep the town-house any longer for the sake of Gwendoline, who was two-and-thirty years of age, and never likely to marry. Lord Ruysdale argued. So he had paid his debts, and had released his estate from some of its many incumbrances, and had come back to the home of his boyhood, to set up as a model farmer and country gentleman.