A year and a half bad passed, and Lord Arleigh was still, as it were, out of the world.

It was the end of April, a spring fresh and beautiful.
His heart had turned to Beechgrove, where the violets were springing and the young larches were budding; but he could not go thither--the picture-gallery was a haunted spot to him--and London he could endure.
The fashionable intelligence told him that the Duke and Duchess of Hazlewood had arrived for the season, that they had had their magnificent mansion refurnished, and that the beautiful duchess intended to startle all London by the splendor and variety of her entertainments.
He said to himself that it would be impossible for him to remain in town without seeing them--and see them of his own free will he never would again.
Fate was, however, too strong for him.

He had decided that he would leave London rather than run the risk of meeting the Duchess of Hazlewood.

He went one morning to a favorite exhibition of pictures, and the first person he saw in the gallery was the duchess herself.

As their eyes met her face grew deadly pale, so pale that he thought she would faint and fall to the ground; her lips opened as though she would fain utter his name.