The two weeks that intervened before Mrs. Howard went to Florence passed like a happy dream to Fair.

To love and to be loved—life has nothing else so sweet to give.

The girl whose love from its very beginning had been almost tragical in its strength and intensity, gave herself up heart and soul, with a very rapture of bliss, to her intoxicating love dream.

She would not think, she would not look behind her into that fatal past that would have marred the sweetness of the present. She drank with thirsty pleasure from the full cup of joy pressed to her lips, seeming to have but one thought:

“Come what may, I have been blessed.”

She knew without a word from his lips that he loved her. He knew without the least unmaidenliness on her part that she cared for him. The two souls had sprung to meet each other. It was fate.

Augustus Frayne and several others who adored her were in despair. Every one could see where matters were tending.

To make matters worse for all her other lovers, Bayard Lorraine had discovered that he was very slightly related to the Howards.

“A distant cousinship, on your husband’s side, Mrs. Howard,” he said, and she did not deny it.

So, on the strength of the relationship, Bayard Lorraine assumed a familiar footing, glad to take advantage of anything that brought him into closer relations with the pretty girl who had carried his heart by storm.

When he had come to London, he had meant to begin a new book almost immediately, but the work did not prosper. He could not stay away long enough from the spot that held his fair cousin.

Mr. Converse was very much amused at the turn affairs were taking.

“Lord Leigh will never forgive me for introducing Lorraine to her, for before this he had some hopes of making her Lady Leigh. Now he is in despair,” he said to Mrs. Howard, who smiled in her grave, still fashion, and answered:

“It is better as it is.”

Mr. Converse did not exactly understand her words. He had supposed that rich Americans always coveted titles for their handsome daughters, and it seemed to him that Fairfax Howard might easily aspire to a title, taking into consideration all her claims to beauty, birth, and wealth.

But it seemed plain enough that Mrs. Howard was not anxious over her daughter’s prospects of being my lady. He concluded that she preferred the aristocracy of genius. Bayard Lorraine’s first novel had placed him in a high rank in the literary world. She was a peculiar woman, and perhaps this pleased her best.

He was the more certain of this when he found out that Bayard Lorraine had an invitation to the Italian villa, of which he availed himself in less than two weeks after the Howards left London.

“Although,” the young man said to himself impatiently, “that simpleton, Gus Frayne, will be forever at her heels, and between him and his two giggling sisters one will have small chance with Fair.”

But he was mistaken. Augustus Frayne was so much disgusted when Lorraine made his appearance that he went off for a week on a friend’s yacht. As for Clara and Nettie Frayne, they had caught beaus of their own, so the young author had a better time than he could have hoped for with the lovely girl whose living charms had driven all his heroines out of his mind, so that he said to her one day in the beautiful flower garden, where they had been walking and gathering roses:

“I promised my publisher the first chapters of a new novel this week, but I have not written a line. You are accountable for this. You have driven everything else out of my head.”

She glanced up and met the beautiful blue eyes fixed on her with a look that set her pulses thrilling with fear and dread—dread of the time when he would speak and tell her in words what his eyes and actions continually declared. Alas! she dared not hear it. She was not free. The thought of Carl Bernicci forced itself upon her at times, almost driving her wild with despair.

“Oh, if I could only hear that he was dead, I would be so happy, so happy!” she would cry to herself, in the silence of the night; but she could not tell whether he were living or dead. Nothing had come to her out of her dead past since she had flung it behind her and fled with Mrs. Howard from New York.

Longing yet dreading to hear Bayard Lorraine’s confession of love, she laughed, and answered gayly:

“Come, if I am the cause, I will try to make atonement. Sit down here, and let us plan the new novel.”

He sat down beside her, and looked curiously into the lovely face that showed so flawless in the clear Italian sunlight.

“I shall be very glad to hear your plans,” he said gayly.

She was busy arranging her roses, and did not look at him, but presently she said:

“I don’t think I have originality enough to imagine anything. If I were going to write a novel, I should get some of those bloodcurdling things one reads in newspapers, and work it up into a sensational plot.”

“Many authors do so,” he replied, and he took from a notebook in his pocket a little packet of clippings. “I have been collecting these for two years or more,” he said. “There is plenty of material here for a dozen novels, if one could decide upon which paragraph to use. Perhaps you will be kind enough to look over these, and make a selection for me.”

He put them in her hands, noting with a thrill that they trembled as they touched his own. He sat watching the bright face as it bent over the printed slips, which she read with a pretty air of importance, one after the other, with now and then a little exclamation of surprise or horror from the rosebud lips. Suddenly he saw that she was growing very pale, and that her lips trembled.

“Do not read that murder! It is too horrible for you,” he exclaimed.