No course remained to him, therefore, but "treason and stratagem." He longed to win her, and yet not altogether by brute force. Some fancy came to him of how sweet it would be to have the love of this beautiful girl, from whom he had recoiled in aversion when Mrs. Cleveland had woven that romance about her low-born, drunken father, but who seemed so desirable now, clothed in all the dazzling externals of wealth, rank, lordly birth, and peerless loveliness. So are we all swayed by the extraneous circumstances of worldly prosperity. Time and again Leslie Noble cursed himself for his wavering and cowardice that fatal night when his weak words of regret had driven his friendless, forlorn little child-bride to desperate suicide. All he had lost by that fatal wavering rushed bitterly over him. "If I had been true and kind to that poor child as her mother wished me to be, I should have reaped a rich reward for my fidelity when the Earl of Fairvale came to seek his child. Why did I not take her by the hand and calm her trembling fears that night by telling her enemies boldly that she was my wife, and I would not see her insulted? Ah, it was my weak fancy for that shrewish Ivy that ruined all! And how cleverly she and her mother played on my fickle feelings! Curses on them both. Vile wretches! They are not fit to live in the same world that holds my peerless Vera!" So it came to pass that, fostering the passion he had conceived for Lady Vera, and enraged by her queenly scorn, Leslie Noble conceived nefarious designs for abducting the young countess and bearing her to a place of concealment, where alone and undisturbed, he might plead his cause and peradventure win her heart. It was the foolish reasoning of a madman, and in truth Leslie Noble was half mad with the violence of his passions, while the bitterness of his disappointment only urged him on to fresh endeavors. Lady Vera little guessed how her footsteps were dogged and her movements watched by this man whom she so loftily despised. She did not know that when she left London and retired to her country home for greater security from her enemies, that this lover, more ruthless than any foe, had followed her to her own neighborhood, and was playing the spy on her movements, eager to carry out his base design. She little knew that it was Leslie Noble who had stolen the book from her lap when she fell asleep by the lake that sunny day. In the advertisement that followed, the crafty wretch saw the accomplishment of his wicked purpose. It was he who, in the guise of an old woman, had given little Hal that crafty letter for Lady Vera.