"Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate."
And the pretty idyl goes on. Lady Vera's morbid thoughts are drawn out of herself, and lifted to a higher plane by Philip Lockhart's cheerful, active mind. The weeks round into a month, and she is almost well again. The color and roundness of youth have come back to her cheek, the light of a strange, new, unconscious happiness is dawning in the darkness of her eyes.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
Far away from the spot where Countess Vera broods over her oath of vengeance, in far America, away in the green heart of the langourous south, is the white marble palace where Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter dwelt, hidden from the knowledge of the man they had wronged, and who had sworn to bring home to them the ruin they had wrought.
To-day, a lovely morning in the autumn of that summer in which the Earl of Fairvale died, Mrs. Cleveland comes out on the piazza of her stately southern home, with a frown upon her brow. Behind her, in the magnificent saloon she has just quitted, high words are raging.
"You never loved me, or you would do as I wish you," wails the weak voice of Ivy to her husband, as, dissolved in tears, she flings herself upon a costly sofa.
"I begin to think I never did, but all the same you and your mother have ruined me by your cursed extravagance. I have not a thousand dollars to my name in bank. This place will have to be sold and we can live on the proceeds a little longer, perhaps," Leslie Noble answers, in a sharp, high-pitched voice, as he strides up and down the floor, cursing within his heart the weak fancy that had led him to marry this shrewish creature.
"Ruined! I do not believe one word of it!" Mrs. Noble breaks out, starting up and glaring at him with her pale, blue eyes. "It is a falsehood you have trumped up to keep from taking mamma and me to Europe where our hearts are just breaking to go! You know very well we have not spent a fortune in the little year and a half we have been married. We couldn't have done it."
"We have done it, anyhow," he answers, sullenly. "It was no difficult manner, considering the way in which you and your mother have forced me to live. Furniture fit for a palace, jewels costly enough for a queen, entertainments costing thousand of dollars, recklessly repeated over and over. We are at the end of the line at last, and you may yet have to take in washing for a living."