Lady Clive--that astute general--on being consulted, puts on the gravest face over her well-pleased mind, and declares that Lady Vera may venture to-morrow, perhaps, and so gives Captain Lockhart twenty-four hours of the pleasures of anticipation, which philosophers declare exceed those of reality. With to-morrow begins a love-idyl, one of the sweetest ever enacted, perhaps, and the most innocent, for Lady Vera is unconscious of it all, nor dreams that love is near. Captain Lockhart is no bold nor intrusive lover. He does not weary Lady Vera with his company or attentions, oftener than not leaving her to the companionship of his sister. But when he enters the room it is always brighter for his coming; when he reads, the volume gains a new interest; when he sings, she lies with closed eyelids, and wonders why she had ever fancied she would dislike this pleasant, agreeable gentleman, with his handsome face, his scholarly mind and chivalrous manner. "It is very pleasant having such a friend," she thinks, within her innocent, unconscious heart. "I was so lonely losing dear papa, and having not one true heart to turn to in my sorrow." A remembrance of her oath of vengeance comes into her mind, and a troubled look sweeps over the fair, young face. It weighs upon her like a burden--the legacy of hate her dying father has left her. How shall she ever keep her vow? "Shall I go to America and seek my enemies who are so securely hidden away that even detectives cannot find them?" she asks herself. "Or shall I lie passive and wait? and when found, how shall I strike Marcia Cleveland's cruel heart?" Alas! poor Vera, if you only knew the dreadful truth. If you only guessed how, in wounding your enemy's heart, you must fatally stab your own, you might pray to die now while the pulses of life are low, ere life became a living death. Well for us that: "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate." And the pretty idyl goes on. Lady Vera's morbid thoughts are drawn out of herself, and lifted to a higher plane by Philip Lockhart's cheerful, active mind. The weeks round into a month, and she is almost well again. The color and roundness of youth have come back to her cheek, the light of a strange, new, unconscious happiness is dawning in the darkness of her eyes. CHAPTER XIV. Far away from the spot where Countess Vera broods over her oath of vengeance, in far America, away in the green heart of the langourous south, is the white marble palace where Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter dwelt, hidden from the knowledge of the man they had wronged, and who had sworn to bring home to them the ruin they had wrought. To-day, a lovely morning in the autumn of that summer in which the Earl of Fairvale died, Mrs. Cleveland comes out on the piazza of her stately southern home, with a frown upon her brow. Behind her, in the magnificent saloon she has just quitted, high words are raging.