"I had letters from England to-day, calling me home at once. There is something gravely wrong, but neither the lawyer nor my father, the earl, gave me any particulars, only they said I must come as soon as possible." He paused, touched by the gasping sob on her lips. "Do not take it so hard, Ethel, dear. I will write often, and return long before the date of our marriage this winter. Meanwhile I will be making soft my English nest for my beautiful bride. But I am very curious over the matter that has called me home, and I shall be in New York to-morrow, and sail on the first ship." CHAPTER XXV. "THE WINDS OF FATE BLOW EVER." "Of all that life can teach us, There's naught so true as this: The winds of Fate blow ever, But ever blow amiss!" The days fled fast, and brought the balm of hope to aching hearts. Contrary to the surgeon's verdict, and in spite of a very dangerous wound, Earle Winans was on the road to recovery. Youth, health, and a superb constitution had triumphed over the circumstances that threatened the close of his young, promising life. But it was quite three weeks, and far into the middle of June, before he was able to be removed from the Conway cottage up to Rosemont. In the meantime something had happened that caused Ladybird's exile from the scene of her mischievous triumphs and coquetries. The story of her novel lottery the night after the picnic had become public property in the village and shared usual notoriety with the duel. Nothing was talked of but the rivalry between Aura and Ladybird that had been the primary cause of the duel. It became the sensation of the hour. The gaping of the villagers when either of the rival beauties appeared on the streets was so unendurable that even the bold-eyed Aura shrank with dismay, and was fain to remain indoors, although the giving up of her designs on Earle Winans was succeeded by the vaulting ambition to become Lady Chester. Arthur did indeed call once on the lawyer's daughter, but she made no impression on the heart that already held a fairer image. But he was curious to know the girl who had been the cause of the duel. When he had satisfied his curiosity and laughed in his sleeve over her wasted airs and graces, he retreated from the field, and none of her efforts could inveigle him inside her doors again. The story of Ladybird's flirtations was well known to everybody else before it reached her father and the Winans family. Bruce Conway was one of the proudest of men, and although he had been an accomplished flirt in his own day he could not tolerate it in his daughter. The truth horrified him. If it had been any other girl than Ladybird, his own lovely daughter, he would have laughed in his idle, graceful way at her novel method of doing justice to her lovers, the "heroes," as she termed them--but this came home too nearly.