And as the occasion grew, so grew the scandal, and so grew indignation against the marquis and scorn of the shepherdess.
"He'll nae mean to marry the quean! If she were my lass, I'd kick him out, an' he were twenty times a markis!" said the shepherd's next neighbor, and many approved his sentiment. These were among the detractors of the young nobleman.
But he had warm defenders—who affirmed that the Marquis of Arondelle would never seek a peasant girl to win her affections, unless he intended to make her his marchioness—which was an idea too preposterous to be entertained for an instant—therefore there could be no truth in these rumors.
And at length, when the great thunderbolt fell that destroyed Lone and banished the ducal family, there were not wanting "guid neebors" who taunted Rose Cameron with such words as these:
"The braw young markis hae made a fule o' ye, lass. Thoul't ne'er see him mair. And a guid job, too. Best ye'd ne'er see him at a'!"
But the handsome shepherdess betrayed no sign of mortification or doubt. When such prognostics were uttered, she crested her queenly head with a smile of conscious power, and looked as though—"she could, an if she would,"—tell more about the Marquis of Arondelle, than any of these people guessed.
Meanwhile, princely Lone passed into the possession of Sir Lemuel Levison, a London banker of enormous wealth. He had not always been Sir Lemuel Levison. But he had once been Lord Mayor of London, and for some part that he had taken in a public demonstration or a royal pageant, (I forget which,) he had been knighted by her Majesty.
He was, at this time, a tall, spare, fair-faced, gray-haired and gray bearded man of sixty-five. He was a widower, with "one only daughter," the youngest and sole survivor of a large family of children.
This daughter, Salome, had never known a mother's love nor a father's care. She was under three years old when her mother passed away.
Then her father, hating his desolate home, broke up his establishment on Westbourne Terrace, London, and placed his infant daughter under the care of the nuns in the Convent of the Holy Nativity in France.