have my rights,-though, Heaven knows, not for my own sake,-or, failing that, at least to avenge your wrongs. My heart was bleeding for you, orphaned as you thought yourself, friendless as you were (save for those good souls the Wardlaws), and most unjustly poor. I went to Richmond, where I found-your mother's grave.'

Here the speaker paused. A feeling very different from those by which he had hitherto been moved appeared to actuate him. The passionate agitation with which he had hinted at his wrongs had disappeared; the pathos with which he had described his yearning to behold his daughter was gone; there was remorse as well as regret in his changed tones.

"If right had been done to me, Nelly, she would perhaps have been alive; under brighter circumstances we might have understood one another better: God knows.-How did your mother die? Did she speak of me?'

She died very suddenly, father; dropped down and died away from home. But before that, when the report came of your death, she reproached herself bitterly for the misunderstanding between you.'

'It was not all her fault. We were both to blame,' murmured Conway. • At heart I can well believe she loved me.'

She did indeed, father.'

'God bless her and forgive us all.-What was I saying, darling?'

"You went to Richmond.'

'Yes, and found you gone to Sandy beach, and followed you. I could not resist looking upon the face that I had pictured to myself so long, and for which that portrait yonder had so long been the only substitute. And I did see you. I was able, you remember, to render you a service.'

'Can I ever forget it? But why was it that, when you had thus given me life for the second time, you did not reveal yourself?' Her father's brow grew dark.

'I had my reasons. It was necessary that I should not be known to you to anybody-for the execution of a plan I had formed to get you righted. There is no need to speak of that. Since restitution has been made, we will take for granted it succeeded. I told you at that time I was not my own master; but it was for you, dear Nelly, that I was about to work. My task was difficult, but nothing to what happened after-to the restraint I had to put on myself when I found my daughter in my pupil. Still, for your sake-never mind why; you must trust me here to have acted for the best, Nelly-I kept my secret. I did keep it till my end was gained.'

'What end, father??

6

Well, for one thing, till the money was paid that was your due. I knew, of course, before you told me, who had sent it.'

'Did Raymond know-what you have told me-then?'

'Yes; and hence his silence with respect to you. His father told him all upon his death-bed, and urged him at once to pay the money. The lad needed no such spur. You know his nature, how sensitive it is as well as noble: the shame of what Ralph Pennicuick had done lived after him in his son's mind; and even when that load of infamous debt was off his shoulders, the young man was still bowed down by the recollection of it. "How can she look at me, except with loathing," said he to himself, "whose father robbed her father, being dead?""

But why was he silent?' inquired Nelly gravely. 'Did he think of me so ill as to imagine that a quarrel about money

between our fathers would have parted me from him? Why was he not frank with me? What right had he to send me that huge sum without a line of kindness? One gracious word would have outweighed it all.'

'Oh, Nelly, do not steel your heart against this lad. He loves you dearly, and I think-I think my darling returns his love. Believe me, he is worthy of it. But for his generosity of soul you would never have called me father. We foresaw your scruples, should you come to hear my story, and I was content to leave it all untold, rather than risk its separating you from Raymond. But he who loves you, and has ever loved, and looks upon you as the dearest treasure earth possesses, refused the sacrifice. "You shall not die," he said, "a stranger to your child." You despise the wealth with which he would have loaded you; but let this gift of his-myself (since it seems you value it)—have weight with you and plead his cause.'

'Oh, father,' faltered the young girl, there is no need-if I were sure--but it was months ago since Raymond sought my love, and I withheld it; and it well may be since then (though you think otherwise)——'

Tut, tut, my girl,' interrupted the old man, drumming on the table with his fingers, no fear but that I read his heart aright. Would he have left England, think you, to go none knows whither. had another taken your place in his affections?'

"What! has he left England?' exclaimed she, the colour fading from her cheeks. Oh, not, I trust, to wander aimless as his father

did?'

'That depends on you, dear Nelly,' said a soft voice behind her. It was Raymond's voice, who, at her father's signal, had stepped

opportunely from the inner room where he had been in wait

6

ing all along. Without your love all countries are alike to me, and in none shall I find a home.'

His blue eyes gazed upon her with earnest wistfulness, but in an instant their expression changed to tender triumph; he was clasping his darling to his breast.

'Dear Ray, I have always loved you,' was her passionate cry, as she threw herself into his arms.

CHAPTER XXVII.

UNITED.

No veteran lags more superfluous on the stage than do lovers, whose course of love is run, in the pages of fiction. But it must be acknowledged that there were exceptional obstacles to be surmounted in the case of Raymond and Nelly notwithstanding that they had plighted troth. before now been found, by persons moving in good society, as difficult a matter as for others to acknowledge their offspring; and the existence of Captain Arthur Conway was a fact the publication of which was likely to be fraught with much more than inconvenience both to himself and other people. For Raymond's sake, or rather for the sake of smoothing for him his way to Nelly's heart, he had to his own daughter pictured his conduct in a way that did him great injustice. He had allowed her to imagine that he had committed the act which had made Pennicuick's life forfeit to Chinese justice; and he had actually borne false witness against himself on the subject of the money owed to him, which, though in one sense a debt of honour, was by no means a gambling debt such as Nelly understood it to be. In thus lowering himself in his daughter's eyes (albeit for her own advantage), and trusting to her loving charity to rectify what seemed to have

To acknowledge one's parents has