'Twas but in the next room her lord led her to a gentleman who stood with
a sort of court about him. It was the tall stranger, with the fair
periwig, and the orders glittering on his breast--the one who had started
at sight of her as she had reached the landing of the stairs. He held
still in his hand a broken red rose, and when his eye fell on her crown
the colour mounted to his cheek.

"My honoured kinsman, his Grace the Duke of Osmonde," said her affianced
lord. "Your Grace--it is this lady who is to do me the great honour of
becoming my Lady Dunstanwolde."

And as the deep, tawny brown eye of the man bending before her flashed
into her own, for the first time in her life Mistress Clorinda's lids
fell, and as she swept her curtsey of stately obeisance her heart struck
like a hammer against her side.




CHAPTER IX--"I give to him the thing he craves with all his soul--myself"


In a month she was the Countess of Dunstanwolde, and reigned in her
lord's great town house with a retinue of servants, her powdered lackeys
among the tallest, her liveries and equipages the richest the world of
fashion knew. She was presented at the Court, blazing with the
Dunstanwolde jewels, and even with others her bridegroom had bought in
his passionate desire to heap upon her the magnificence which became her
so well. From the hour she knelt to kiss the hand of royalty she set the