Lady Vera is walking slowly by the beautiful lake, brooding deeply over this letter. She does not see the white lilies nodding their heads among the broad, green leaves, nor the soft breeze dimpling the placid water into tiny laughing wavelets. She is thinking of Lady Clive's story of the rich Americans, to whom she had conceived an antipathy. "They must be one and the same," she tells herself, "but I cannot write to Lady Clive and ask her, because she is traveling all the while, and gives me no address. But I shall see them in London, as they will be there for the season. And so Ivy has married since her old lover, Leslie Noble, died. I wonder whom she has beguiled into taking her? Whoever he may be, I pity him, being tied to such a shrew! Well, well, the time for my vengeance is near at hand. What shape will it take, I wonder?" A wind, colder than that which ruffles the lilies on the lake, seems to chill her graceful form, as she recalls the words of her vow: "I swear, by all my hopes of happiness, that I will punish that woman through her dearest affections--that, at any cost to myself, I will avenge my mother's wrongs! They are rich, arrogant, prosperous. How can I hurt them?" she muses. "What blow can I strike at their stony hearts that will avenge the wrongs of the dead? Shall I tell the world the story of my mother's wrongs and mine? Marcia Cleveland and her cruel daughter would only laugh me to scorn if I did. Yet I must think of some plan to humble them. I am bound by my oath to the dead. All is blank before me yet; I cannot see one step before me to the accomplishment of my task. Would it be wrong to ask God to help me to punish those wicked and cruel women?" What form will her vengeance take? Day and night the lonely young countess broods over that puzzling question. She forms a hundred schemes and abandons them all. Some of them are too dreadful. Her pure, delicate nature recoils from them. She grows pale and thin brooding over this vexing question. It banishes for a time even the remembrance of Captain Lockhart from her mind. She scarcely eats or sleeps. Long hours she wanders by the quiet lake, up and down, up and down, like a sentry on his post, heedless of Mrs. Vance's remonstrances on her pale and altered looks. "You live too much alone, I fear," the kind chaperon remonstrates. "It is not well for the young to live so quiet and isolated a life as you are doing, my dear. You should accept the invitations of the county families, and entertain them in return." "I am in mourning," Lady Vera objects, wearily. "But I do not mean for you to be very gay, my dear Lady Vera. If you would even invite some young lady of your own age to come and visit you it would be so much livelier for you. There is Miss Montgomery, for instance. She is at Sir William Spencer's. I dare say she would come if you invited her." "I detest Miss Montgomery," Lady Vera replies, with unusual pettishness.