He is full of sorrow for the fair young countess, full of fears that he will not speak aloud, for he has heard far more of Raleigh Gilmore's intentions than he would even hint to Vera or to Lady Clive. He knows that she will have to make a fight for title, name and fortune, and that her case before the law is so terribly weak that there is large danger of her being cast out from her inheritance, and branded as adventuress and impostor. But of all that is in his mind Sir Harry says nothing. Why should he grieve her more, he thinks, looking at the pale, suffering young face, on whose white and wasted lineaments the traces of sorrow were so plainly and sadly outlined. "Upon her face there was the tint of grace, The settled shadow of an inward strife, And an unquiet drooping of the eye As if its lid were charged with unshed tears." The next day, taking the old memorandum-book, she goes for a solitary ramble. Lady Clive is going for a drive with her children, so she will not be missed. A favorite resort of Lady Vera's is a silvery little lake on the green border of the wide, level park. Water-lilies with their wide green leaves and waxen-white petals rock softly on the bosom of the lake, and feathery-green willows fringe it softly round. Lady Vera finds a quiet, sequestered seat with her back against a willow tree, and applies herself to her task, turning page after page softly and unweariedly in the pursuit of her object. A weary quest. The simple, leather-bound memorandum volume, with plain gold clasps, had been Earl Fairvale's bosom companion in the days when he was simple Lawrence Campbell. Patiently Vera reads on and on, and the morning sun mounts higher in the heavens, the water ripples softly at her feet, the wind sighs in the grass and the willows. But it is not the most delightful reading in the world, studying the dull entries of an old memorandum-book. Lady Vera's sweet patience begins to flag at last. Her red lips quiver with disappointment and suspense. She shuts the book with one taper finger between the pages and leans her golden head back against the tree, wearily. "There is nothing here--absolutely nothing," she tells herself, sadly, all unconscious that but one thin leaf intervenes between her and success. "I shall lose all," she continues, with a choking sob; "I have lost my lover and all my happiness. Now I shall have to lose my name, my title, my home, all the lavish wealth to which I have become so accustomed that I shall not know how to do without it. All my life I have seemed to be the foot-ball of fate. Sorrow is ever near me. It is like Philip's song. Oh, how often I recall it: "'As the blade wears the scabbard, The billow the shore, So sorrow doth fret me Forevermore!'"