Here the duke vegetated until the meeting of Parliament, when he went up to London to institute proceedings for a divorce.

At that time there was no divorce court, and little necessity for one.  Divorces were to be obtained by act of Parliament only.

The duke commenced proceedings immediately on his arrival in London.  His case was a clear and simple one; there was no opposition; consequently he was soon, matrimonially considered a free man.

The Duke of Hereward was now nearly fifty years of age.  Life was uncertain, and the laws of succession very certain.

If the present bearer of the coronet of Hereward should die childless, the title would not descend to the son of his only and beloved sister, but would go to a distant relative whom the duke hated.

A speedy marriage seemed necessary.

The duke looked around the upper circle of London society, and fixed upon the Lady Augusta Victoria McDugald, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Banff, and a woman as little like his unhappy first wife as it was Possible for her to be.

“The daughter of an hundred earls” was tall and stately, cold and proud, embodying the child’s or the peasant’s very ideal of “a duchess.”

“Dukes,” like monarchs, “seldom woo in vain.”

After a short courtship the duke proposed for the lady, and after a shorter engagement, married her.

The newly-wedded pair went on a very unusually extended tour over Europe, into Asia and Africa, and then across the ocean and over North and South America.

After twelve months spent in travel, they returned to England only that the anticipated heir of the dukedom might be born on the patrimonial estate of Hereward Hold.

There was the utmost fulfillment of hope.  The expected child proved to be a fine boy, who was christened for his father, Archibald-Alexander-John, by courtesy styled Marquis of Arondelle.

Had the duke’s mind been as free from remorse for his homicide as his heart was free from regret for his first love, he would have been as happy a man as he was a proud father; but ah! the sense of blood-guiltiness, although incurred in the duel, under the so-called “code of honor,” weighed heavily upon his conscience, and over-shadowed all his joys.

His duchess was a prolific mother, and brought him other sons and daughters as the years went by; but, as if some spell of fatality hung over the family, these children all passed away in childhood, leaving only the young Marquis of Arondelle as the sole hope of the great ducal house of Hereward.

So the time passed in varied joys and sorrows, without bringing any tidings, good or bad, of the poor, lost girl who had once shared the duke’s title and possessed his heart.

He believed her to be as dead to the world as she was to him.  And so he gradually forgot even that she had ever lived!  She had long been “out of mind” as “out of sight.”