CHAPTER XLV.
AN INVITATION.
They both saw him at the same moment. Leone, with a sudden paling of her beautiful face, with a keen sense of sharp pain, and Lady Chandos with a bright, happy flush.
"Here is my husband," she said, proudly; little dreaming that the beautiful singer had called him husband, too.
He came toward them slowly; it seemed to him so wonderful that these two should be sitting side by side—the woman he loved with a passionate love, and the woman he married under his mother's influence.
There were so many people present that it was some time before he could get up to them, and by that time he had recovered himself.
"Lance," cried Lady Chandos, in a low voice, "see how fortunate I am; I have been introduced to Madame Vanira."
Yes, his heart smote him again; it seemed so cruel to deceive her when she was so kind, so gentle; she trusted in him so implicitly that it seemed cruel to deceive her. She turned with a radiant face to Leone.
"Let me introduce my husband, Lord Chandos, to you, Madame Vanira," she said, and they looked at each other for one moment as though they were paralyzed.