The Lost Lady of Lone | Page 5

her his marchioness--which was an idea too preposterous to be entertained for an instant--therefore there could be no truth in these rumors.
And at length, when the great thunderbolt fell that destroyed Lone and banished the ducal family, there were not wanting "guid neebors" who taunted Rose Cameron with such words as these:
"The braw young markis hae made a fule o' ye, lass. Thoul't ne'er see him mair. And a guid job, too. Best ye'd ne'er see him at a'!"
But the handsome shepherdess betrayed no sign of mortification or doubt. When such prognostics were uttered, she crested her queenly head with a smile of conscious power, and looked as though--"she could, an if she would,"--tell more about the Marquis of Arondelle, than any of these people guessed.
Meanwhile, princely Lone passed into the possession of Sir Lemuel Levison, a London banker of enormous wealth. He had not always been Sir Lemuel Levison. But he had once been Lord Mayor of London, and for some part that he had taken in a public demonstration or a royal pageant, (I forget which,) he had been knighted by her Majesty.
He was, at this time, a tall, spare, fair-faced, gray-haired and gray bearded man of sixty-five. He was a widower, with "one only daughter," the youngest and sole survivor of a large family of children.
This daughter, Salome, had never known a mother's love nor a father's care. She was under three years old when her mother passed away.
Then her father, hating his desolate home, broke up his establishment on Westbourne Terrace, London, and placed his infant daughter under the care of the nuns in the Convent of the Holy Nativity in France.
Here Salome Levison passed the days of her dreamy childhood and early youth. Her father seldom found time to visit her at her convent school, and she never went home to spend her holidays. She had no home to go to.
When Salome was eighteen years of age, the Superior of the convent wrote to Sir Lemuel Levison, enclosing a letter from his daughter that considerably startled the absorbed banker and forgetful father. He had not seen his daughter for two years, and now these letters informed him that she wished to become a Nun of the Holy Nativity, and to enter upon her novitiate immediately! But that being a minor, she could not do so without his consent.
His sole surviving child! The sole heiress of his enormous wealth! On whom he depended, to make a home for him in his declining years, when he should have made a few more millions of millions upon which to retire!
And now this long neglected daughter had found consolation in devotion, and wished to take the vail which was to hide her forever from the world!
Sir Lemuel Levison hastened to France, and brought his daughter back to England. He took apartments at a quiet London hotel, and looked about for a suitable country-seat to purchase.
At this time Lone was advertised. He went thither with the crowd.
He saw Lone, liked it, wanted it, and determined to "pay for it and take it."
He stopped the vandalish dismantling of the premises by outbidding everybody else and purchasing all the furniture, decorations, plate, pictures, statues, vases, mosaics, and everything else, and ordering them to be left in their old positions.
He then engaged the house-steward, the housekeeper, and as many more of the servants of the late proprietor as he could induce to remain at Lone.
And when the princely castle was cleared of its crowds, and once more restored to order, beauty and peace, Sir Lemuel Levison went back to London to bring his daughter home.
Salome, submissive to her father's will, yet disappointed in her wish to take the vail, met every event in life with apathy.
Even when the splendors of Lone broke upon her vision she regarded them with an air of indifference that amused, while it mortified, her father.
"I see how it is, my girl," he said. "You have renounced the world, and are pining for the convent. But you know nothing of the world. Give it a fair trial of three years. Then you will be twenty-one years old, of legal age to act for yourself, with some knowledge of that which you would ignorantly renounce; and then if you persist in your desire to take the vail--well! I shall then have neither the power nor the wish to prevent you," added the wise old banker, who felt perfectly confident that at the end of the specified time his daughter would no longer pine to immure herself in a convent.
Salome, grateful for this concession, and feeling perfectly self-assured that she would never be won by the world, kissed her father, and roused herself to be as much of a comfort and solace to him as she might be in the three