"No, we will put her into the carriage and take her home," she says. "She will come to herself, directly. It is a blessed unconsciousness for her, poor girl. Why should we call her back to remembrance too soon?" So the soldier lifts her in his strong and tender arms, and bears her to the carriage. Lady Clive receives the drooping head upon her lap, and they roll homeward, Lady Vera lying pale and mute between them like some pure, white lily, broken and beaten down by the force of the pitiless storm. "This is hard lines upon you, Phil," Sir Harry Clive says, from his corner. "Yes," his brother-in-law answers, in a low voice, and they speak no more until low sighs, rippling over Lady Vera's lips, presage her return to consciousness. She lifts her head and looks at them, then drops her face in her hands, and bursts into passionate sobs and tears. Lady Clive folds her white arms fondly around the heaving form. "Do not weep so wildly, darling Vera," she whispers, gently. But the heavy sobs only break forth more tumultuously. "Do not check me," she whispers, "let me weep. Perhaps these tears may save my heart from breaking. There is such a terrible weight on heart and brain, and has been for weary, weary days. Let me weep until I can weep no more, and then I may be calm enough to tell you all my wretched story. Then you may know how to pardon my act of to-night." So Lady Clive expostulates no more, only holds the slight form closer in her tender arms, reckless of the raining tears that spot and stain her azure satin robe as the burning drops fall on it from Vera's eyes. CHAPTER XXVI. When Lady Vera has told all her story to these kind and sympathizing friends with all the fire and eloquence of passion, their indignation bursts forth unrestrainedly. Lady Clive weeps from pure sympathy. "Now at last I understand Fairvale's strange reticence and melancholy," Sir Harry Clive exclaims. "He was indeed most cruelly wronged, and Marcia Cleveland must have been a fiend incarnate." Colonel Lockhart alone says nothing. He sits a little apart, his arms folded over his broad breast, his blue eyes cast to the floor, a look of gloom and settled despair on his handsome, high-bred face. The bitter pain at his heart no tongue can tell. "And all this while you were Leslie Noble's wife," Lady Clive says, with a heavy sigh for her brother's sake. "But I believed him dead, you know," Lady Vera answers, with one swift glance at the lover she has lost. "I wish he had been, for your sake and Phil's," pronounces Sir Harry, fervently, and a moan of pain surges over the pale lips of the beautiful girl.