"Do you care to hear about Philip, poor, dear boy? They sent him out on the plains, poor dear, to fight the Indians, wretched creatures, this summer. He has been wounded in the shoulder, and promoted to a colonelcy for bravery. Lord Gordon is coming over in time for the hunting season, I hear, but Philip will not promise to get leave and come with him.
"Dear Vera, I wish you would have come with us. I know you are moped to death in your grand, but lonely home, with prim old Mrs. Vance for your duenna. As soon as we go home to Sunny Bank and rest up a little, we mean to take you by storm, Sir Harry, and I, and all the children."
Lady Vera smiles over that last threat. The news is very welcome. She fancies how much brighter Fairvale Park will seem with Lady Clive's happy children chasing the deer in the wide, green park, and gathering the lilies from the peaceful lake. She takes no interest in the story of the rich Americans, but later on a letter comes to her from New York, which, oddly enough, instantly recalls Lady Clive's letter to her mind.
The letter is from the New York detective whom her father had employed to track his enemy to her hiding-place. Lady Fairvale having retained him in her employ, he writes, briefly and respectfully:
"I have traced the Clevelands at last only to lose them again. They have been living in Florida all the while. The daughter has married a rich man, and this summer they came to New York, and soon after sailed for England. I learn that they are now traveling in Switzerland with great eclat, so that your ladyship will scarcely fail to hear of them."
Lady Vera is walking slowly by the beautiful lake, brooding deeply over this letter. She does not see the white lilies nodding their heads among the broad, green leaves, nor the soft breeze dimpling the placid water into tiny laughing wavelets. She is thinking of Lady Clive's story of the rich Americans, to whom she had conceived an antipathy.
"They must be one and the same," she tells herself, "but I cannot write to Lady Clive and ask her, because she is traveling all the while, and gives me no address. But I shall see them in London, as they will be there for the season. And so Ivy has married since her old lover, Leslie Noble, died. I wonder whom she has beguiled into taking her? Whoever he may be, I pity him, being tied to such a shrew! Well, well, the time for my vengeance is near at hand. What shape will it take, I wonder?"
A wind, colder than that which ruffles the lilies on the lake, seems to chill her graceful form, as she recalls the words of her vow:
"I swear, by all my hopes of happiness, that I will punish that woman through her dearest affections—that, at any cost to myself, I will avenge my mother's wrongs! They are rich, arrogant, prosperous. How can I hurt them?" she muses. "What blow can I strike at their stony hearts that will avenge the wrongs of the dead? Shall I tell the world the story of my mother's wrongs and mine? Marcia Cleveland and her cruel daughter would only laugh me to scorn if I did. Yet I must think of some plan to humble them. I am bound by my oath to the dead. All is blank before me yet; I cannot see one step before me to the accomplishment of my task. Would it be wrong to ask God to help me to punish those wicked and cruel women?"
What form will her vengeance take? Day and night the lonely young countess broods over that puzzling question. She forms a hundred schemes and abandons them all. Some of them are too dreadful. Her pure, delicate nature recoils from them. She grows pale and thin brooding over this vexing question. It banishes for a time even the remembrance of Captain Lockhart from her mind. She scarcely eats or sleeps. Long hours she wanders by the quiet lake, up and down, up and down, like a sentry on his post, heedless of Mrs. Vance's remonstrances on her pale and altered looks.