"
"No one has ever found fault with my spirits before," said the duchess.
"You are not complimentary, Norman."
"You give me such a strange impression," he observed. "Of course it is
highly ridiculous, but if I did not know you as well as I do, I should
think that you had something on your mind, some secret that was making
you unhappy--that there was a struggle always going on between something
you would like to do and something you are unwilling to do. It is an
absurd idea, I know, yet it has taken possession of me."
She laughed, but there was little music in the sound.
"What imaginative power you have, Norman! You would make your fortune as
a novelist. What can I have to be unhappy about? Should you think that
any woman has a lot more brilliant than mine? See how young I am for my
position--how entirely I have my own way! Could any one, do you think,
be more happy than I?"
"No, perhaps not," he replied.
So the week passed, and at the end of it Lady Peters went with Madaline
to St. Mildred's. At first the former had been unwilling to go--it had
seemed to her a terrible _mesalliance_, but, woman-like, she had grown
interested in the love-story--she had learned to understand the
passionate love that Lord Arleigh had for his fair-haired bride.
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