“I am very sorry to have erred from excess of zeal,” he replied, sarcastically.  “It is a comfort to me to think that I shall not so offend again.”

“I hope,” she said, more anxiously, “that it will not injure you—­that no one will know about it.  It was really too shocking.  Prison for a young man of your position!  It was absurd.”

“I thought so myself, before I came out; it was absurd; but you will be comforted to know, Lady Amelie, that no one seems to have known of it but my mother, Lady Carruthers, and my lawyer, Mr. Forster.  So far as the world is concerned, I am safe.”

The prince returned, looking slightly jealous, and then Basil amused himself, after a bitter fashion.  He watched Lady Amelie playing off all her airs, graces, and fascinations on the young prince, as she had played them upon him.  He was cured.  It was a bitter lesson, but it lasted him.  He began to understand the difference between romance and reality—­between dreaming and doing.  It had been a hard, bitter, almost shameful, lesson, but he was thankful in after years that he had learned it.

He found, after a time, that the world was wiser than he thought.

“There is some story about Mr. Carruthers,” people would say, but no one ever knew exactly what it was.  He remained in Rome for a whole week.  Before it was over he was quite cured of his liking for the queen of coquettes.

CHAPTER XV.

The Denouement.

Then Basil Carruthers set himself busily to work to discover how he might best undo the effects of his folly.  The duties he had thought so lightly of rose before him now.

“I will go down to Ulverston,” he said to himself, “and with God’s help I will be a wiser and a better man.”

He saw what his mistaken notions of chivalry had done for him—­how completely they had misled him—­how near they had brought him to ruin and disgrace.  The meeting between mother and son was not the most pleasant in the world.  Lady Carruthers, stately, sensitive, and proud, could not forgive the dark disgrace under which her son had lain.  He saw how deeply she felt it.

“Mother,” he said, “you must judge me leniently.  I own myself mistaken.  I think, sometimes, I must have been mad, I cannot tell you precisely what took me to prison.  Will you believe me that it was for a woman’s sake?”

“I knew it!” she interrupted.

“It was to screen a woman’s folly,” he continued.  “And, indeed, wrong as I was, I believed myself to be doing a most chivalrous deed.”

“It is a great pity, Basil,” said Lady Carruthers.

“Yes,” he said, quietly; “but I was a woman’s dupe, and I have suffered enough.  It was one false step, but I shall spend my life in trying to redeem it.”

He kept his word.  In four years’ time the name of Basil Carruthers rang through the land with a pleasant sound; he had, indeed, found something to do.