It had come so suddenly as to almost overwhelm her; the great gift of the gods that she had been waiting, aye, and plotting for, had fallen to her at last, and her cup of triumph was full to overbrimming, but at the same time she, as Lord Charles would have put it, "kept her head." She thoroughly¹ understood how and why she had gained her will. She could read Leycester as if he were a book, and she knew that, although he had asked her to be his wife, he had not forgotten that other girl with the brown hair and dark eyes—that "Stella," the painter's niece.

This was a bitter pang² to her, a drop of gall³ to her cup, but she accepted it.

Just as Jasper said of Stella, so she said of Leycester.

"I will make him love me!" she thought. "The time shall come when he will wonder how he came to think of that other, and be filled with self-contempt for having so thought of her." And she set about her work well. Some women in the hour of their triumph, would have shown their delight, and so worried, or perhaps disgusted, their lover; but not so did Lady Lenore.

She took matters with an ineffable⁴ calm and serenity⁵, and[254] never for one moment allowed it to be seen how much she had gained on that eventful evening.

To Leycester her manner was simply charming. She exerted herself to win him without permitting the effort to be even guessed at.

Her very beauty seemed to grow more brilliant and bewitching. She moved about the place "like a poem," as Lord Charles declared. Her voice, always soft and musical, with unexpected harmonies, that charmed by their very surprises, was like music; and, more important still, it was seldom heard. She exacted none of the privileges of an engaged woman; she did not expect Leycester to sit with her by the hour, or walk about with her all day, or to whisper tender speeches, and lavish⁶ secret caresses⁷. Indeed, she almost seemed to avoid being alone with him; in fact she humored him to the top of his

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