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WILD MARGARET, es gT9
breast for months past, for which he had felt that night
when he thought that Blair had discovered his villainy.
It was for this that he had plotted and schemed with a_
heartless ruthlessness that an Iago might have envied! To
find the woman he-had loved and entrapped snatched by
Death from his grasp in the very hour of his triumph, and
to finish his career—a Suicide!
CHAPTER XXXII.
Axout twelve months after what the newspapers called
“The Mystery in High Life at Naples,’”’ on a very bright
day in June, the Earl of Ferrers and Margaret, his wife, °
were standing at the open window of the drawing-room at
- the Court. . . .
_ This window commands the best view of the drive, and it
seemed by the intentness with which the two pairs of eyes
watched it that they were expecting some one. /
Leyton Court always looks at its best in June, and it
has never looked better than it did this year, for the earl
had spent a great deal of money on the place—‘‘a small
fortune,’ as if was said. A new. wing had been built; the
old part of the house redecorated; but above and beyond
all, an addition had been made to the picture-gallery,
t
which raised it to the first rank in England...
This had been done ‘ to pleasure’’ Margaret, the count-
ess, whom the world rightly regarded as one of its best
and noblest artists. This. same world, too, had gone
slightly mad over the countess, and would have been de-
lighted to make her the sensation of’ the season. For, |
consider! she was not only the wife of a wealthy earl, but
the heroine of as romantic a history as the modern world
wots of. Even now people did. not know the full particu-
larg, did not- know more than that the countess was sup-
had, in all innocence,
osed' to have died, and that the earl ce,
i, 1 Violet ( olet Graham had died
married Violet Graham; and that Vi c
of heart disease at Naples, and Mr. Austin Ambrose had
All this the world
poisoned himself—for love of her. I .
knew, but it was still ignorant of the details, of the dia-
bolical plot which Austin Ambrose had woven, and so
nearly successfully. But it knew enough
garet a “sensation,” and it was quite prepared to meet
‘her in saloons and ballrooms, and point at her in the parlx,
and fight for introductions to her, and intrigue to get her
to its concerts and dinner-parties. . a
But Margaret had declined to be made a sensation of.
Immediately after the tragedy at the palace at Naples,
both she and Blair disappeared, not together,
Teen mens: tthe wna ema tne et
to make Mar- —
as the world
et eee
a