"To know for an hour you were mine completely, Mine in body and soul, my own-- I would bear unending tortures sweetly, With not a murmur and not a moan!" If he had seen that Precious had a favored lover it would have been the cruelest torture; but he was spared that agony. She was the same to all--bright, sweet, spirited, yet without a shadow of coquetry. To her father's old friends, the gray-haired statesmen and diplomats, she was as cordial and courteous as to the young butterflies of fashion and wealth that hovered around her; but in her sweet graciousness to all Lord Chester saw no sign of that preference for one at which Ethel had hinted in more than one letter. Bitterly, jealously, he watched for his happy rival, and at last he reminded Ethel of her letter, and asked the name of her sister's lover. The warm color flamed into Ethel's olive cheeks, and she knit her dark, slender brows in momentary perplexity. "Why, I have forgotten," she exclaimed, then added: "Oh, yes, it was at Narragansett Pier, was it not, Arthur? I remember it now, but I have forgotten the young man's name, it is so long ago, and one meets so many strangers in a summer! But the affair never came to anything after all. Precious loved him, I know, but he was a wretched flirt and went away without asking her to marry him. You notice how sad she looks at times. I think she still grieves in secret over her disappointment." In his heart he doubted Ethel's story. There was no man on earth who would have flung away the jewel of Precious' love if he could have had it for his own. He believed that Ethel, in her jealousy of her sweet sister, had uttered an untruth. And he quailed at the thought of spending all his life with one who could stoop to so cruel a falsehood. He was the soul of white-handed honor, this handsome young scion of a noble house, and he held with the poet: NOBLESSE OBLIGE. "I hold it the duty of one who is gifted, And specially dowered in all men's sight, To know no rest till his life is lifted Fully up to his gift's great height. "He must mold the man into rare completeness, For gems are set only in gold refined; He must fashion his thoughts into perfect sweetness And cast out folly and pride from his mind." It gave Ethel a cruel pleasure to wound Lord Chester by such stories of her sister. When she saw his handsome face blanch and his proud eyes darken with pain, she felt that she was taking a fair revenge for his heart's perfidy to her who should have reigned in it supreme.