"And then?" he asks, eagerly. "As soon as you please," she answers, with tender blushes glowing all over her beautiful face, and then she laughs musically. "We are setting the day for our marriage, and we are not even engaged," she laughs, in answer to his aggrieved look. "We are!" he insists. "We are not," she declares. "We dissolved our engagement several months ago, and since I became free you have not asked me to renew it." The tender mischief in the lovely, laughing, dark eyes, almost disconcerts the handsome soldier. "Oh, Vera, I thought of course you knew that I meant it," he says, rather incoherently. "We _are_ engaged, and we are going to be married, aren't we, dear?" "If you ask me," she says, with demure mirth, out of the happiness of her heart. "I ask you now," he answers, laughing too. "Is it yes, Vera?" She murmurs assent with a pretty assumption of coquetry, and bends her head for her second betrothal kiss, delighting her lover by the child-like gaiety that shows how her spirit is gradually throwing off the depressing influence of grief that has so long surrounded her. "Then, Vera, I may write to my father, General Lockhart, and ask him to come over to the wedding?" he says, presently. "What! and the _trousseau_ not ready yet?" she laughs. "Oh, my darling, you will write and order it at once, will you not?" he exclaims. "I have already ordered it, Colonel Lockhart," she replies, demurely. "What! before you were engaged?" he retorts, feeling it his turn to tease now. "I had the prospect of a proposal, sir," she answers, with charming frankness. "Then I shall write to my father to come over. I would not miss having him see my lovely bride, and I intend that the wedding shall come off as soon as the _trousseau_ is ready," declares the happy lover. Lady Vera does not say him nay. She is very happy in the prospect of a union with her faithful lover. The days glide past like a dream of pleasure, quietly, because as yet she denies herself to callers, but happily, because surrounded by her dearest friends and her adoring lover. CHAPTER XLVIII. And one day the last sweet rose leaf is added to the brimming cup of Lady Vera's new happiness, which even the thought of Raleigh Gilmore's fell design could not wholly overshadow. Sir Harry Clive had sent her an urgent request to come into the library to meet a visitor, and only staying a moment to arrange her disordered hair, for she had been in the nursery playing with Lady Nella's children, she obeys him. Sir Harry takes her hand and draws her forward to the man, neatly clothed in black, who has risen from his chair to meet her. "I know your face," she cries, instantly. "I have seen you somewhere. It is--oh, can it be Mr. McPherson?"