"You are right; and indeed you must see her now," answered his friend. "Una must give you her confidence, must come home to you. It is not right that she, your wife, and my adopted child, should be slaving her young life away like this through some fancied duty." "I must see her. I will go to Mr. Chesterton since she denies me a sight of her. I will tell him my story, I will ask him to plead my cause with Una," Eliot exclaimed, in strong agitation; and just a little later he stood before the banker's mansion ringing the bell, and looking up in the darkness at the front of the great house, thrilling with the thought that his loved, lost bride was so near to him at this moment, that it seemed almost impossible but that they must soon come face to face. "And if she loves me still, as she said she did that happy night before she left me, I swear that no earthly power shall ever tear her again from my arms!" he vowed to himself. Mr. Chesterton was at home, and received his guest in the library with courteous surprise; but when the young man poured forth his agitated story, the banker became greatly interested and excited. "You are right. She is, she must be your wife. She came to us two years ago from the Convent of Le Bon Berger in New Orleans. My wife was once a pupil there, and wrote to the mother superior for a French teacher for our little ones. She sent us Mademoiselle Lorraine, who is as gifted and clever as she is lovely and winning. But I have always seen that she lay beneath the shadow of some sorrow. Wait, my young friend, and I will go upstairs and beg this proud young wife to give you an immediate interview," concluded the good man. CHAPTER XLII. Eliot waited in the large, elegant library with eager impatience, never doubting that Mr. Chesterton would succeed in his kindly mission. Una could not be so cruel as to refuse him an interview. "And once in her presence I will combat every objection she can raise until I persuade her to go home with me," he said to himself, firmly, and his heart began to beat lightly, happily, with the thought that soon Una would be with him, never to be torn from him again. "It is five years since I saw her. She was scarcely more than a child then. Now she is a woman, beautiful, gifted, intelligent. Oh, how I long to be wealthy, for the sake of my fair young wife!" he thought. Then it dawned upon him that the banker was staying a long time. The bronze clock on the mantel had chimed the quarters of an hour twice while he had sat there all alone. "He finds her hard to persuade," he exclaimed, rising from his chair and beginning to pace restlessly up and down the floor. Five, ten minutes elapsed. Then there came a step at the door. The handle turned. Mr. Chesterton entered--alone. Eliot turned to him in unutterable dismay. "Una!" he exclaimed, hoarsely, then paused, speechless. He saw a folded slip of paper in the banker's hand, and on his genial face disappointment and regret.