"Have they all gone?" Lady Newhaven asked, after the little meal was finished, and, with much coaxing, she had drunk a glass of champagne.

Angélique assured her they were all gone, the relations who had come to the funeral—"Milor Windham and l'Honorable Carson" were the last. They were dining with Miss West, and were leaving immediately after dinner by the evening express.

"Ask Miss West to come to me as soon as they have gone," she said.

Angélique hung about the room, and was finally dismissed.

Lady Newhaven lay quite still, watching the fire. A great peace had descended upon that much-tossed soul. The dreadful restlessness of the last weeks was gone. The long suspense, prolonged beyond its time, was over. The shock of its ending, which shattered her at first, was over too. She was beginning to breathe again, to take comfort once more: not the comfort that Rachel had tried so hard to give her, but the comfort of feeling that happiness and ease were in store for her once more; that these five hideous months were to be wiped out, and not her own past, to which she still secretly clung, out of which she was already building her future.

"It is December now. Hugh and I shall be married next December, D.V., not before. We will be married quietly in London and go abroad. I shall have a few tailor-made gowns from Vernon, but I shall wait for my other things till I am in Paris on my way back. The boys will be at school by then. Pauly is rather young, but they had better go together, and they need not come home for the holidays just at first. I don't think Hugh would care to have the boys always about. I won't keep my title. I hate everything to do with him"—(Lord Newhaven was still him)—"and I know the Queen does not like it. I will be presented as Mrs. Scarlett, and we will live at his place in Shropshire, and at last we shall be happy. Hugh will never turn against me as he did."

Lady Newhaven's thoughts travelled back, in spite of herself, to her marriage with Lord Newhaven, and the humble, boundless admiration which she had accepted as a matter of course, which had been extinguished so entirely, so inexplicably, soon after marriage, which had been succeeded by still more inexplicable paroxysms of bitterness and contempt. Other men, Lady Newhaven reflected, respected and loved their wives even after they lost their complexions, and—she had kept hers. Why had he been different from others? It was impossible to account for men and their ways. And how he had sneered at her when she talked gravely to him, especially on religious subjects. Decidedly, Edward had been very difficult, until he settled down into the sarcastic indifference that had marked all his intercourse with her after the first year.

"Hugh will never be like that," she said to herself, "and he will never laugh at me for being religious. He understands me as Edward never did. And I will be married in a pale shade of violet velvet trimmed with ermine, as it will be a winter wedding. And my bouquet shall be of Neapolitan violets, to match my name."