With a startled cry that brings Lady Clive rushing into the room, he springs to his feet. Lady Vera's swoon is a long and deep one, and they wonder much over its cause, but no one dreams that the American newspaper has caused it all. Yet the listless gaze of the unhappy girl roving over the list of deaths in a Philadelphia paper has found one line that struck dumb, for a moment, the sources of life in their fountains. It was only this: "Died, at his residence on Arch street, on the 19th instant _Leslie Noble_." CHAPTER XVI. Lady Vera waking from her long and death-like swoon, wakens also to a dream of happiness. The terrible incubus that weighed upon her so heavily is lifted from her heart. The loveless fetter that bound her is snapped asunder. Leslie Noble, whose very name has been a shuddering horror to her for more than two years, is dead, and she is free--free! What exquisite possibilities of happiness thrill her heart at the very thought! She keeps her room that evening, pleading weariness as an excuse for not appearing at dinner. She wants time to think over the joyful change in her prospects before she meets Captain Lockhart again. She is scarcely herself now. Such a strange, tremulous, passionate happiness is thrilling through her heart as makes her nervous with its intensity. Little shafts of fire seem thrilling through her veins. Love, which she had thought never to experience, has taken up its dwelling in her heart, and every nerve thrills with its unspeakable rapture. "And I was so blind, I thought it only friendship!" the fair young countess murmurs to herself, with a happy smile playing around her lips. "How happy he will be when I tell him that I love him, and that I will be his wife! It cannot be wrong for me to marry him. I am sure he will help me to my vengeance when I tell him of the oath I swore by my father's death-bed. Dear Philip, how grand and handsome he is! He is the noblest of men!" Lady Clive, having privately questioned her brother as to Vera's fainting fit, and received no satisfaction, is at her wits' end! Why this terrible swoon, when she had deemed Lady Vera well and strong again? She wonders even more when the young girl appears at breakfast the next morning. Never had the young countess appeared so enchantingly lovely. Clothed in a delicate, white morning dress, with purple pansies at her throat and waist, and all her glorious golden hair floating loosely about her perfect form, with a blush of happiness on her cheeks, and the shy light of tenderness in her splendid eyes, it seemed to all as if her peerless beauty had received a new dower of glory. All wondered, but none knew that the threatening cloud that had overshadowed her life so long had rolled away, and that it was the new light of hope that made her face so radiant.