Letters came from him but seldom. He was always on the wing--always following some new clue, spending money like water in the effort to trace the fugitives. Mrs. Laurens complained that he was spending all his income in that wild and foolish pursuit, but to her entreaties that he would come home he paid not the slightest heed. She had not given him much sympathy in his sorrow and his heart had grown cold to her. He felt vaguely that her _hauteur_ had helped to drive his wife to despair and flight. “If we had not neglected her so much, if we had pitied and forgiven her a little sooner, her heart would not have turned against me,” he thought often; and remembering how his mother had tried to keep up the feud, he found it hard to forgive her interference. But the sudden death of his father nearly three years after his wife’s flight brought the wanderer home again. Nina had married a year ago, and gone to a home in Richmond, of which she was the light and life. Only the mother and Dot remained at Maple Shade, where the family of six had once made everything bright and cheerful. “You must never leave us again, Cecil,” they said, piteously, and he stayed with them in their loneliness and sorrow until another year had rolled by. Then Doctor Charley Laurens came home, and brought a lovely English bride, for whom the family threw off its somber mourning and made merry. Nina and her husband came from Richmond, Louise Barry from Ferndale, other guests from Lewisburg, until the large house was full of friends who came to join in the festivities over the marriage and return of the favorite son. Then the bride was lovely, rich, and of gentle birth. She was a cousin of Lord Westerley. “He knows you all, both he and his wife,” she said. “We knew Lord Westerley, but he was not married,” Mrs. Laurens answered. “He must have married soon after you left, for Madelon Trueheart has been his wife four years,” answered the vivacious bride. “Then he married Madelon Trueheart?” Cecil exclaimed, rousing from his usual apathetic manner. He remembered that beautiful Madelon Trueheart had been his wife’s friend. Molly had told him that Madelon would not leave her parents to marry her lover. He said carelessly that he had heard this, without adding that his lost wife told him. Pretty, young Mrs. Laurens answered, eagerly: “How noble that was in beautiful Madelon, or Lady Westerley as she is now. Happily a missing relative turned up and took her place in the heart of Sir Edward and his wife, and left Madelon free to marry.” “A missing relative?” Cecil repeated, with a start; then, eagerly: “But I thought she was the last of the race.” “Then you have never heard of Sir Edward’s disinherited son? He made a low marriage, and his people would not forgive him. But he died soon after, and they repented and sent for his wife and child, who came and stayed with them, and made happiness possible for Madelon and Lord Westerley.”