"I shall have to leave London," Lady Vera says, desperately, when rumor has wafted to her ears the story of Leslie Noble's cavalier treatment of Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter. "I am afraid--horribly afraid of that man. His parting threat still rings in my ears." "You need not be afraid while you are with us," Lady Clive exclaims, vivaciously. "Do you think we would ever let the mean wretch come near you again?" But Lady Vera, coloring deeply, explains: "He has other methods of annoying me besides his presence. Already I have received several letters from him, some of a wheedling, persuasive nature, others filled with offensive threats." Sir Harry looks up from his paper. "Shall I horsewhip the scoundrel for you, Lady Vera?" he asks, indignantly. "It would give me the greatest pleasure." She shrinks, sensitively, from this offered championship. "No, no, for it would only make the affair more notorious. And I am afraid it has been talked about already--has it not, Sir Harry?" she asks, with a painful blush on her shamed face. "Yes, rather," he admits, reluctantly. "And I have been afraid even to look into the papers," she pursues. "I thought it might have gotten into them. Has it, Sir Harry?" He answers "yes" again with sincere reluctance, and Lady Vera hides her face in her hands a moment, while crimson blushes of shame burn her fair cheeks. She thinks to herself that she would gladly have died rather than have encountered all this. "But they do not say any harm of you, dear--you mustn't think _that_," said Lady Clive, kindly. "And they all sympathize with you. Your friends call on you every day, only you decline to see them, you know. But every one is so sorry for you, and has cut those people--your enemies, I mean, Vera--quite dead." "Noble has turned them out of Darnley House, bag and baggage. Had to sell the place over their heads to oust them," says Sir Harry. "Is it not strange that I should have taken such an antipathy to them when I first met them abroad? Experience has so fully justified me that I shall plume myself hereafter on being a person of great discernment," laughs Lady Clive. Lady Vera sighs and is silent. Her heart is very sore over the parting with her lover, and the notoriety that the keeping of her oath has brought down upon her. Fain would she bow her fair head in some lone, deserted spot, and die of the shame and misery that weighs upon her so heavily.