The deep color flows into the girl's fair cheeks.
"I think not, father," she answers, gravely. "I have no wish to marry. I have never met anyone that I could love."
Earl Fairvale is well pleased.
"I am glad to hear you say that, my dear," he answers. "I have no wish to lose my daughter. And, after all, so much sorrow comes from love, one is best without it."
Lady Vera is very glad to hear him talk so. He will never urge her to marry, and she may keep her secret always—always, unless—dreaded possibility—Leslie Noble should return to claim her.
"But he will not. Why should he? He never cared for me. Yet how strange that he should have let my father take me away without one word. He must indeed have been glad to be rid of me," she muses.
The earl and his daughter are staying with Lady Clive for the "season." She is an American, and the daughter of a famous American general. She is very happily married to Sir Harry Clive, baronet. Loving everything American with intensest love, she falls an instant victim to Lady Vera's charms.
"Your mother was an American—so am I," she says, vivaciously; "so I claim you on that score. Do you like England, Lady Vera, and English people?"
"Yes," Vera answers, in her grave way.
"And," Lady Clive goes on, in her bright, airy fashion, "do you intend to marry an Englishman or an American?"