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.

A breath of her own youth swept over her as she watched them.
It might be a _mesalliance_, a bad match, but it was decidedly a case of true love, of the truest love she had ever witnessed; so that her dislike to the task before her melted away.
After all, Lord Arleigh had a perfect right to please himself--to do as he would; if he did not think Madaline's birth placed her greatly beneath him, no one else need suggest such a thing.

From being a violent opponent of the marriage, Lady Peters became one of its most strenuous supporters.

So they went away to St.Mildred's, where the great tragedy of Madaline's life was to begin.
On the morning that she went way, the duchess sent for her to her room.
She told her all that she intended doing as regarded the elaborate and magnificent _trousseau_ preparing for her.

Madaline was overwhelmed.
"You are too good to me," she said--"you spoil me.