“No one has deserved it more,” said Lord Stuart, doing justice at last to the man whom he had once despised and underrated, and sincerely glad that Norman had found so lovely and loving a bride to make up to him for the sorrows the capricious and guilty Camille had brought upon his life. Lady Edith felt that three days would be long to linger in New York, when she was so eager to meet again the winning girl who had stolen into her inmost heart, and whose little child bore the name of the dead husband she had loved so dearly; but she did not utter her impatience aloud. She had a sweet and docile nature that clung most tenderly to her elder brother in his weakness, and not for worlds would she have hinted to him that she was impatient at their enforced delay on account of his weariness. It seemed strange to her at times that her heart dwelt so devotedly on the lovely girl-wife, but when she questioned herself for the reason, she said to herself that it was partly because of the girl’s wonderful grace and charm, and half because of the strange chance likeness to the baronet, her dead husband. He had been a blonde, with hair almost as golden as Thea de Vere’s, and eyes of deepest violet. His early death and the long, long illness of Lady Edith that followed it had left ineffaceable traces on heart and brain. Her tender eyes had grown used to tears, and her heart to the echo of the poet’s plaint: “So tired, so tired, my heart and I! It was not thus in that old time When he sat with me ’neath the lime, To watch the sunset from the sky. ‘Dear love, you’re looking tired,’ he said; I, smiling at him, shook my head-- ’Tis now we’re tired, my heart and I! “So tired, so tired, my heart and I! Though now none takes me in his arm To fold me close and kiss me warm, Till each quick breath end in a sigh Of happy languor. Now, alone, We lean upon this grave-yard stone, Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I!” “I can wait yet a little longer,” Lady Edith sighed to herself; but the time seemed long in spite of her resolve at patience. She spent the next three days in seeing the sights of the city, but Thea was always in her thoughts--Thea, and the blue-eyed, golden-haired baby, Arthur’s namesake. How she longed to take them both in her arms and lavish on them the pent-up love of her hungry heart! “It almost seems as if they belonged to me,” she thought, smilingly. CHAPTER LIX. Despite his stay of but a few hours in New York and his hasty journey there and back, it was almost a week between the going and coming of Norman de Vere, and his heart was full of anxiety as he dismissed the hack he had hired at the station and walked up the broad steps of his home just as the soft shadows of twilight were settling over the beautiful Southland where his lot was cast.