“If it be possible she is more so,” returned Lord Arleigh; “but tell me, if I had appealed to you in the dilemma—­if I had asked your advice—­what would you have said to me?”

“I should have no resource but to tell you to act as you have done,” replied the earl; “no matter what pain and sorrow it entailed you could not have done otherwise.”

“I thought you would agree with me.  And now, Mountdean, tell me, do you see any escape from my difficulty?”

“I do not, indeed,” replied the earl.

“I had one hope,” resumed Lord Arleigh; “and that was that the father had perhaps been unjustly sentenced, or that he might after all prove to be innocent.  I went to see him—­he is one of the convicts working at Chatham.”

“You went to see him!” echoed the earl, in surprise.

“Yes; and I gave up all hope from the moment I saw him.  He is simply a handsome reprobate.  I asked him if it was true that he had committed the crime, and he answered me quite frank, ‘Yes.’  I asked him if there were any extenuating circumstances; he replied ‘want of money.’  When I had seen and spoken to him, I felt convinced that the step I had taken with regard to my wife was a wise one, however cruel it may have been.  No man in his senses would voluntarily admit a criminal’s daughter into his family.”

“No; it is even a harder case than I thought it,” said the earl.  “The only thing I can recommend is resignation.”

Lord Mountdean thought that he would like to see the hapless young wife, and learn if she suffered as her husband did.  He wondered too what she could be like, this convict’s daughter who had been gifted with a regal dower of grace and beauty—­this lowly-born child of the people who had been fair enough to charm the fastidious Lord Arleigh.

Meanwhile Madaline was all unconscious of the strides that destiny was making in her favor.  She had thought her husband’s letter all that was most kind; and, though she felt that there was no real grounds for it, she impressed upon her mother the need of the utmost reticence.  Margaret Dornham understood from the first.

“Never have a moment’s uneasiness, Madaline,” she said.  “From the hour I cross your threshold until I leave, your father’s name shall never pass my lips.”

It was a little less dreary for Madaline when her mother was with her.  Though they did not talk much, and had but few tastes alike, Margaret was all devotion, all attention to her child.

She was sadly at a loss to understand matters.  She had quite expected to find Madaline living at Beechgrove—­she could not imagine why she was alone in Winiston House.  The arrangement had seemed reasonable enough while Lord Arleigh was abroad, but now that he had returned to England, why did he not come to his wife, or why did not she go to him?  She could not understand it; and as Madaline volunteered no explanation, her mother asked for none.