"It is hard lines upon me, that is true, Nella," he answers, with a repressed sigh, as he draws his arm around her waist. CHAPTER XLII. In spite of his outward _nonchalance_ and _sang froid_, Leslie Noble at heart was restless and impatient and consumed by a burning anxiety. Six weeks had elapsed since he had incarcerated his beautiful prisoner in the ruined old house in the wood, and in all that time he had been afraid to venture back to see her, owing to a keen suspicion he had imbibed regarding the close espionage that was kept upon his movements by the employes of Colonel Lockhart. The slight flesh wound Lady Vera had inflicted on his arm had entirely healed, and with it had died out his futile anger against her, giving place again to the weak love that had urged him to that desperate recourse of abducting her. "I was rash and hasty in my last interview with her," he tells himself, "I should have remembered that love cannot be forced. I must woo her gently, with respectful looks and reverential words. I must sue for her favor humbly, as if she were a queen and I her humble slave. Many a woman has been won by flattery." The longing came over him to woo her with rich gifts and costly jewels poured lavishly at her feet as if naught were too splendid and costly for his beautiful idol. Alas! his splendid fortune had dwindled to a wretched competency under the various extravagances of Ivy and her mother. "Weak fool that I was to allow Ivy to retain those magnificent jewels," he thinks, bitterly. "She ruthlessly sacrificed my fortune to obtain them, and by every right on earth they belong to Lady Vera, who is my real wife, not to the woman who usurped her place." Fostering these thoughts and feelings ceaselessly in his breast, Leslie Noble at last conceived a dastardly design to possess himself of the jewels which he had at first decided should remain the property of his deserted and repudiated second wife. Accordingly one morning, when he had ascertained that his mother-in-law was away from home, and not likely to return for several hours, he sent up his card to Ivy, who, after some little delay in arranging her toilet, received him in the shabby-genteel little parlor. In the trembling hope that she might yet win back the recreant, Ivy had made herself as fair as she could without the assistance of her maid, with whose services her mother's parsimony had compelled her to dispense. "Overdressed and daubed with paint, as usual," was Mr. Noble's disgusted, inward comment, but he allowed none of this feeling to appear upon his face. Instead, he threw a glance of deep tenderness and contrition into his soft, dark eyes, and held out his arms, exclaiming sadly: "My injured wife! Can you ever forgive me the sorrow I have caused you?" "Oh, Leslie, you have repented!" the lady sobs, throwing herself into the open arms.