"His happiness!" she cried. "His happiness! In his pride and cruelty he threw it away. He is as proud and cold now as he was then. He would take me back no sooner now than he would then. But why do we talk of these things? He will never have the chance. He will never know the truth. They have raised a costly monument to St. Leon Le Roy's _beloved wife_--for them that is the end." "Eight years," he said, musingly. "At least he has been faithful to her memory. It is strange that he has not married again--if not for love, at least for the sake of an heir." She caught her breath sharply; her lovely face grew deathly white. "Married! married!" she cried, sharply. "Why do you talk of such things, Uncle Carlyle?" "I did not mean to pain you, Laurel," he answered. "But, my dear, it seems so strange. Le Roy has a princely estate and fine old name. It would be only natural if he should wish to leave it to his own descendants." "So he shall," she said. "When I am dead, he shall have Laurie. I have everything arranged in the clearest fashion. There will be no difficulty in proving his identity. But, Uncle Carlyle, do not let us talk of these things. They hurt me." "You want to be alone," he said. "Very well, dear; I will go and play with my boy. Forgive me for saying those things that hurt you; I did not mean to do so." He went away, and Laurel sunk down wearily, her hands clinched tightly together, a look of woe and dread on her lovely face. "Married again!" she uttered, hoarsely. "Well, and if he should, what is there to prevent him? Could I speak? would I speak? No! And yet--ah, Heaven! the fatal glamour is on me still. It is a mad love--nothing less!" The wind sighed in the trees, the murmur of the river came to her softly, the sweet, calm day seemed to woo her to forgetfulness, but the beautiful woman who had won fame and wealth and honor in those long years since she had been put away from her husband's heart, sat silent, with a look of mute despair on her fair young face. That mad love, that terrible temptation of her girlhood, had spoiled her life. "It is a mad love," she repeated to herself. "How my face burned, and my heart beat, when I met him. All the old madness surged up within me, the love, the sorrow, the shame at my deceit. It is a wonder I did not fall down dead at his feet! No one ever loved more deeply than I loved St. Leon Le Roy," she went on, after a pause. "If he had forgiven me my fault that night when he had found me out, I should have been the happiest woman in the world, instead of being the most wretched, as I am! Ah! why did I ever come back here? It was a blind mistake. It has reopened the old wound, and it is bleeding, bleeding. Ah, Heaven, shall I never learn indifference? Shall I never sear my cureless wound? I must go away soon. I was weak and wild ever to have come here with Uncle Carlyle." CHAPTER L.