“Now, Admiral,” said Vandemar, “you can help us. The two husbands and wives now before you have no place to call their own in which they can lay their heads. We are willing to buy or lease. Where can we go?”
“I know just the place,” cried the Admiral. “It was made for you. It is called Crow Lodge, and is about a quarter of a mile from my own place.”
“I should change the name at once,” said Vivienne.
“And what would you call it?” asked Vandemar.
“I should name it after our best friend,” she replied, “Countess Mont d’Oro—Marie Lodge. Would not that be a pretty name? It is to her more than to any one else that we owe our present happiness, and I am going to name everything I can after her.”
The Admiral looked up, and with a roguish twinkle in his eye, asked: “Even——”
Vivienne blushed rosy red; the others laughed, but she answered stoutly: “Yes, even!”
Jack and Bertha had been guests at Marie Lodge but a few days when an urgent summons came from his mother, the Countess. Before leaving Portsmouth, Jack had wired his father of his intended visit to Devonshire, and had given his address. The summons was in the form of a telegram. It read: “Come home at once. Your father is at the point of death.”
“You must come with me, Bertha,” said Jack. “Your place is by my side. I know my mother will receive you as a daughter. If my father has any objections to our marriage, it is too late to prevent it, but I wish his forgiveness, if he thinks such an act necessary, before he dies.”
The Earl of Noxton’s illness had not been of long duration, but he had suffered intense pain. Nature, at last, had succumbed in so far as to offer no further resistance to the inroads of disease; instead, there had come that physical peace and that lucid interval which so often precede dissolution.