The Lost Lady of Lone. Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

her to a meeting with the missing heir. It had been said that the mad duke and his son were somewhere on the Continent. A wide field! Yet, on the arrival of Sir Lemuel and Miss Levison at any city, Salome's first thought was this:

      "Perhaps they are living here, and I shall see him."

      But she was always disappointed. And at the end of a seven months' sojourn on the Continent, Sir Lemuel Levison brought his daughter back to London, only in time for the meeting of Parliament.

      Only two years of Salome's probation was left—only two more seasons in London. Her father's anxiety increased.

      He sent for her chaperone again, and opened his house in Westbourne Terrace to all the world of fashion. Again the young heiress was followed, flattered, feted as much as if she had been a beauty as well. Again she received and rejected several eligible offers of marriage. And so the second season passed.

      Sir Lemuel Levison took his daughter to Scotland, and invited a large company to stay with them at Lone, thinking that, after all, more matches were made in the close daily intercourse of a country house, than in the crowded ball-rooms of a London season.

      But though the banker's daughter received two or three more eligible offers of marriage, she politely declined them all, and stole away as often as she could to worship the pictured image in the old tower.

      Her chaperone was in despair.

      "How many good men and brave has she refused, do you know, Lemuel?" inquired Lady Belgrade.

      "Seven, to my certain knowledge," angrily replied the banker.

      "Perhaps she likes some one you know nothing about," suggested the dowager.

      "She does not; I would let her marry almost any man rather than have her enter a convent, as she is sure to do when she is of age. I would let her marry any one; aye, even Johnnie Scott, who is the most worthless scamp I know in the world."

      "And pray who is Johnnie Scott!"

      "Oh, a handsome rascal; is sort of kinsman and hanger-on of the young Marquis of Arondelle; he used to be. I don't know anything more about him."

      "Perhaps he is the man."

      "Oh, no, he is not. There is no man in the convent. Well, we go up to London again in February. It will be her last season. If she does not fall in love or marry before May, when she will be twenty-one years of age, she will immure herself in a convent, as I am pledged not to prevent her."

      The conversation ended unsatisfactorily just here.

      In the beginning of February Sir Lemuel Levison, with his daughter and her chaperone, went up to London for her third season. They established themselves again in the sumptuous house on Westbourne Terrace, and again entered into the whirl of fashionable gayeties.

      It was quite in the beginning of the season that Sir Lemuel and Miss Levison received invitations to a dinner party at the Premier's.

      It was to be a semi-political dinner, at which were to be entertained certain ministers, members of Parliament, with their wives, and leading journalists.

      Sir Lemuel accepted for himself and Miss Levison. On the appointed day they rendered themselves at the Premier's house, where they were courteously welcomed by the great minister and his accomplished wife.

      After the usual greetings had been exchanged with the guests that were present, and while Sir Lemuel and Miss Levison were conversing with their hostess, the Premier came up with a stranger on his right arm.

      Salome looked up, her heart gave a great bound and then stood still.

      The original of the portrait in the tower, the self-devoted son, the self-exiled heir, the idol of her pure worship, the young Marquis of Arondelle stood before her.

      And while the scene swam before her eyes, the Premier bowed, and presenting him, said:

      "Sir Lemuel, let me introduce to you, Mr. John Scott of the National Liberator. Mr. Scott, Sir Lemuel Levison, our new member for Lone."

      Mr. John Scott!

CHAPTER III.

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THE RUINED HEIR.

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      Where, meanwhile, was the "mad" duke with his loyal son?

      Various reports had been circulated concerning them, so long as they had been remembered. Some had said that they had emigrated to Australia; others that they had gone to Canada; others again that they were living on the Continent. All agreed that wherever they were, they must be in great destitution.

      But now, three years had passed since the fall of Lone and the disappearance of the ruined ducal family, and they were very nearly forgotten.

      Meanwhile where were they then?

      They were hidden in the great wilderness of London.

      On leaving Lone, the stricken duke, crushed equally under domestic affliction and financial ruin, and failing both in mind and body, started for London, tenderly escorted by his son.

      It was the last extravagance of the young marquis to engage a whole compartment in a first-class carriage on the Great Northern Railway train, that the fallen and humbled duke might travel comfortably and privately without being subjected to annoyance by the gaze of the curious, or comments of the thoughtless.

      On reaching London they went first to an obscure but respectable inn in a borough, where they remained unknown for a few days, while the marquis sought for lodgings which should combine privacy, decency and cheapness, in some densely-populated, unfashionable quarter of the city, where their identity would be lost in the crowd, and where they would never by any chance meet any one whom they had ever met before.

      They found such a refuge at length, in a lodging-house kept by the widow of a curate in Catharine street, Strand.

      Here the ruined duke and marquis dropped their titles, and lived only under their baptismal name and family names.

      Here Archibald-Alexander-John Scott, Duke of Hereward and Marquis of Arondelle in the Peerage of England, and Baron Lone, of Lone, in the Peerage of Scotland, was known only as old Mr. Scott.

      And his son Archibald-Alexander-John Scott, by courtesy Marquis of Arondelle, was known only as young Mr. John Scott.

      Now as there were probably some thousands of "Scotts," and among them, some hundreds of "John Scotts," in all ranks of life, from the old landed proprietor with his town-house in Belgravia, to the poor coster-monger with his donkey-cart in Covent Garden, in this great city of London, there was little danger that the real rank of these ruined noblemen should be suspected, and no possibility that they should be recognized and identified. They were as completely lost to their old world as though they had been hidden in the Australian bush or New Zealand forests.

      Here as Mr. Scott and Mr. John Scott, they lived three years.

      The old duke, overwhelmed by his family calamity, gradually sank deeper and deeper into mental and bodily imbecility.

      Here the young marquis picked up a scanty living for himself and father by contributing short articles to the columns of the National Liberator, the great organ of the Reform Party.

      He wrote under the name of "Justus." After a few months his articles began to attract attention for their originality of thought, boldness of utterance, and brilliancy of style.

      Much speculation was on foot in political and journalistic circles as to the author of the articles signed "Justus." But his incognito was respected.

      At length on a