Lady Cecil laid down the letter. Was this jealousy, this cruel pang which seemed to rend her heart asunder, as she read of her rival's bliss? Oh, surely not jealousy! Had she not with her own lips bidden him to fulfil his promise? and was she grieved and wounded now to find that he had kept the spirit as well as the letter of that promise? Had she expected that he would marry the girl who loved him, and yet by his cold indifference bear witness that he loved another? Surely she could never have thought he could be base enough to do that. "What did I want?" she thought; "what did I expect? I told him to go back to her; and yet my heart aches with a new pain when I hear that he is happy by her side. Could I wish it to be otherwise? Could I wish him any thing but what he is--good, and true, and noble--a royal lover--a tender husband?" Alone in her own room, in Dorset Square, Cecil Chudleigh knelt long and late that night, praying for resignation and peace of mind. But even amidst her prayers the face of Hector Gordon, looking down upon her with melancholy tenderness, came between her and her pious aspirations. "Oh, I wish that I had never seen him," she cried passionately; "what a happy thing it would have been for me if I had never seen him!" The day came when Lady Cecil had need to utter this cry with a wilder meaning; the day came when she had reason to think that she would have been a blessed creature if she had died before Hector Gordon came to Fortinbras. CHAPTER VII. THE GREAT O'BOYNEVILLE. The dowager was of a lively disposition, and by no means inclined to spend her evenings in the dusky solitude of her drawing-room in Dorset Square, where the departed General's monster mandarin-jars and Oriental cabinets loomed dark and grim in the twilight. In the halls and on the staircases of Tyburnia and Belgravia, in the deliciously-squeezy little drawing-rooms and ante-chambers of the tortuous by-ways in May Fair, wherever there was festivity or junketing in which a gentlewoman might share, Mrs. MacClaverhouse and her black silk and diamonds were to be seen. She took Cecil with her every where, and she informed the young lady that it was on her account that the phantom-chariot and the grumpy coachman with doubtful legs and feet were called into service every evening.