I cannot endure to think that my daughter and heiress, Lady Madaline Charlewood, should have spent her youth under so terrible a cloud." There came no answer, and, looking at her, he saw that the color had left her face, that the white eyelids had fallen over the blue eyes, that the white lips were parted and cold--she had fainted, fallen into a dead swoon.
He knelt by her side and called to her with passionate cries, he kissed the white face and tried to 'recall the wandering senses, and then he rang the bell with a heavy peal.

Mrs.Dornham came hurrying in.
"Look!" said Lord Mountdean.

"I have been as careful as I could, but that is your work." Margaret Dornham knelt by the side of the senseless girl.
"I would give my life to undo my past folly," she said.

"Oh, my lord, can you ever forgive me ?" He saw the passionate love that she had for her foster-child; he saw that it was a mother's love, tender, true, devoted and self-sacrificing, though mistaken.

He could not be angry, for he saw that her sorrow even exceeded his own.
To his infinite joy, Madaline presently opened her dark eyes and looked up at him.