her mother's arms in a distant town, a child of wonderful beauty and
angelic nature, born of love, and inheriting love's divine qualities.

A few months before the young couple returned to their native soil,
they received a letter which caused Preston the greatest
astonishment, and Mabel some hours of hysterical weeping. This
letter was written by Judge Lawrence, and announced his marriage to
Baroness Brown. Judge Lawrence had been a widower more than a year
when the Baroness took the book of his heart, in which he supposed
the hand of romance had long ago written "finis," and turning it to
his astonished eyes revealed a whole volume of love's love.

It is in the second reading of their hearts that the majority of men
find the most interesting literature.

Before the Baroness had been three months his wife, the long years of
martyrdom he had endured as the husband of Mabel's mother seemed like
a nightmare dream to Judge Lawrence; and all of life, hope and
happiness was embodied in the woman who ruled his destiny with a
hypnotic sway no one could dispute, yet a woman whose heart still
throbbed with a stubborn and lawless passion for the man who called
her husband father.



CHAPTER VII



More than two decades had passed since Preston Cheney followed the