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passionately kissed her, after a swift glance round to see that no one was
nigh.

So the reconciliation was complete; all doubts were dissipated, and they
lingered long together, talking of themselves and a thousand kindred topics,
in which foreign service was not included; and more complete it was, when,
after escorting her home (Lady Drumshoddy being absent at Exeter Hall),
in the solitude of the drawing-room, they had a sweeter lingering still,
Finella's head resting on his shoulder, the touch of her cheek thrilling
through him, and like some tender and tuneful melody her soft cooing voice
seemed to vibrate in his head and heart together.

So they were united again after all!

At last they had to separate, and looking forward to a visit on the

morrow, Hammersley, seeming to tread on air, in a state of radiance, both in
face and mind, hurried across the square to the Club, where he came
suddenly upon Villiers, whom he had not seen for some days, and who
seemed rather curiously to resent his evident state of high spirits.

'Well, Villiers,' said he, 'you do look glum, by Jove! What is the matter
now—the Wolseley ring, and all that—the service going to the dogs!'

'You know deuced well that it has gone—went with the regimental
system. No; it is a cursed affair of my own. I have been robbed.'

'Robbed—how—and of what?'

'My pocket-book, containing some valuable papers and more than £500
in Bank of England notes.'

'Good heavens! I hope you have the numbers?'

'No—never noted such a thing in my life. Who but a careful screw

would do so?'

'How came it about?'

 'Well, you see,' said Villiers slowly, while manipulating a cigar, 'I took a
run over to Ostend, and there, as the devil would have it, at the Casino, and
afterwards in the mail boat to Dover, I fell in with a charming Belgienne, an
awfully pretty and seductive creature, who was on her way to London and
quite alone. We had rather a pronounced flirtation, and exchanged photos—
an act of greater folly on her part than on mine, as the event proved; for,
after taking mine from my pocket-book (which she could see was full of
notes), I never saw the latter again. I dropped asleep, but awoke when the
tickets were collected—awoke to find that she had slipped out at some
intermediate station, and the pocket-book, which I had placed in my breast-
pocket, was gone too! There had been no one else in the carriage with me—
indeed I had quietly tipped the guard to arrange it so. Thus, as no trace of it
could be found, after the most careful search, she must have deftly
abstracted it. Here is her photo—a deuced dear work of art to me!'

'She is pretty, indeed!' exclaimed Hammersley; 'such a quantity of

beautiful fair hair!'

'It was dark golden.'

'Surely it was rash of her to give you this?'

'It was vanity, perhaps, when the idea of theft had not occurred to her.'

'Throw it in the fire.'

'Not at all.'

'What do you mean to do with it—preserve the likeness of a mere

adventuress?'

'I shall give it to the police as a clue. It may lead to the recovery of my
money, and, what is of more consequence to me, my correspondence.'

So the photo of the pretty Belgienne was handed over to the authorities;
but neither Villiers nor Hammersley could quite foresee what it was to lead
to.
 CHAPTER XVII.

FLORIAN DYING.

After her flight from Craigengowan to London, Dulcie had found shelter
in the same house wherein she had lodged after leaving Revelstoke, in a
gloomy alley that opens northward off Oxford Street. The vicar, on whose
protection and interest she relied, was not in London, and would be absent
therefrom for fully a month; so she had written to Mr. Pentreath, who
quietly, but firmly rebuked her for her folly in quitting Craigengowan, and
expressed his dismay that she should be alone and unprotected in London,
and urged her to come to him, in Devonshire, at once.

But Dulcie remembered his slender income, his pinched household, and
notwithstanding all the dear and sad associations of Revelstoke, she
remained in London, thinking that amid its mighty world something would
be sure to turn up.

The solitude of her little room was so great that times there were when
she thought she might go mad from pure inanition and loneliness; but
greater still seemed the solitude of the streets, which, crowded as they were
by myriads passing to and fro, were without one friend for her.

She was not without her occasional chateaux en Espagne—dreams of

relations, rich but as yet unknown, who would seek her out and cast a
sunshine on her life; but how sordid seemed all her surroundings after the
comfort and luxury, the splendour and stateliness, of Craigengowan!

Dulcie had once had her girlish dreams of life in London, at a time when
the chances of her ever being there were remote indeed—dreams that were
as the glittering scenes in a pantomime; and now, in her loneliness, she was
appalled by the great Babylon, so terrible in its vastness, so hideous in its
monotony as a wilderness of bricks and bustle by day, bustle and gas by
night, with its huge and dusky dome over all, with its tens upon thousands
of vehicles of every kind—a whirling vortex, cleft in two by a river of mud
and slime, where the corpses of suicides and the murdered are ploughed up
by steamers and dredges—a river that perhaps hides more crime and
dreadful secrets than any other in Europe; and amid the seething masses of
the great Babylon she felt herself as a grain of sand on the seashore.

Our neighbours next door know us not, nor care to know; and to the
postman, the milkman, and the message-boy we are only 'a number' as long
as we pay—nothing more.

So times there were when Dulcie longed intensely for the home of her
childhood, with its shady Devonshire lanes redolent of ripe apples, wild
honeysuckle, and the sycamore-trees, and for the midges dancing merrily in
the clear sunshine above the stream in which she and Florian were wont to
fish together: and but for Shafto and Lady Fettercairn she would have
gladly hailed Craigengowan, with its ghost-haunted Howe, its old gate of
the legend, Queen Mary's Thorn, and all their lonely adjuncts, could she but
share them with Finella; but she was all unaware that the latter was there no
longer.

Her little stock of money was wearing out, with all her care and
frugality, and her whole hope lay in the return of the vicar, who, too
probably, would also reproach her with precipitation.

'Things will come right yet—they always do—if one knows how to wait
and trust in God,' said Dulcie to herself, hopefully but tearfully; 'and when
two love each other,' she added, thinking of Florian, 'they may beat Fate
itself.'

Dulcie had not written to Finella, as she was yet without distinct plans;
she only knew that she could not teach, and thus was not 'cut out' for a
governess. Neither did she write to Florian, as she knew not where to
address him, and, knowing not what a day might bring forth, she could not
indicate where she was to send an answer. So week followed week; her
sweet hopefulness began to leave her, and a presentiment came upon her
that she would never see Florian again. So many misfortunes had befallen
her that this would only be one more; and this presentiment seemed to be
realised, and a dreadful shock was given, when by the merest chance she
saw in a paper a few weeks old the same telegram concerning him which
had so excited old Mr. Kippilaw, and which had found its way into print, as
everything seems to do nowadays.

The transport with sick and wounded was on its homeward way; but
when it arrived would he be with it, or sleeping under the waves?

It was a dreadful stroke for Dulcie; her only tie to earth seemed to be
passing or to have passed away. She had no one to confide in, no one to
condole with her, and for a whole day never quitted her pillow; but, 'at
twenty, one must be constitutionally very unsound if grief is to kill one, or
even to leave any permanent and abiding mark of its presence.' But she had
to undergo the terrible mental torture of waiting—waiting, with idle hands,
with throbbing head, and aching heart, for the bulletin that might crush her
whole existence. He whom she loved with all her heart and soul, who had
been woven up with her life, since childhood, was far away upon the sea,
struggling it might be with death, and she was not by his pillow; and the
lips, that had never aught but soft and tender words for her, might be now
closed for ever!

Already hope had been departing, we have said. Her heart was now
heavy as lead, and all the brightness of youth seemed to have gone out of
her life. She began to feel a kind of dull apathetic misery, most difficult to
describe, yet mingled with an aching, gnawing sense of mingled pain.

Florian dying, probably—that was the latest intelligence of him. How

curt, how brief, how cruel seemed that item of news, among others!

She opened her silver locket, with the coloured photo of him. The artist
had caught his best expression in a happy moment; and it was hard—oh,
how hard! for the lonely girl to believe that the loving and smiling face,
with its tender dark eyes and crisp brown hair, was now too probably a
lifeless piece of clay, mouldering under the waves of the tropical sea.

She had made up her mind to expect the worst, and that she could never
see him more.
 'It seems to me,' she thought, 'as if I had ceased to be young, and had
grown very old. God help me, now!' she added, as she sank heavily into a
chair, with a deathly pale face, and eyes that saw nothing, though staring
into the dingy brick street without; and though Dulcie's tears came readily
enough as a general rule, in the presence of this new and unexpected
calamity, nature failed to grant her the boon—the relief of weeping freely.
'There is a period in all our lives,' says a writer, 'when the heaviest grief will
hardly keep us waking; we may sink to slumber with undried tears upon our
face; we may sob and murmur through the long night; but still we have the
happy power of losing consciousness and gaining strength to bear the next
day's trial.'

So Dulcie, worn with heavy thought, could find oblivion for a time, and
even slept with the roar of mighty London in her ears.

The vicar had not yet returned, so day followed day with her, aimlessly
and hopelessly.

She thought the public prints could give her no further tidings now. She
knew not where to seek for intelligence, and could but wait, dumbly,
expectantly, and count the hours as they drifted wearily past, in the
desperate longing that some tidings would reach her at some time of her
dearest, it might be now her dead, one!

The Parks were completely empty then; the sunshine was pleasant and
warm for the season; the grass was green and beautiful; and lured thereby
one forenoon, the pale girl went forth for a little air, when there occurred an
extraordinary catastrophe that, in her present weakened state of mind and
body, was fully calculated to destroy her!

The afternoon passed—the evening and the night too, yet she did not as
usual return to her humble lodging. The morning dawned without a trace of
her; the landlady began to appraise her few effects; the landlord shook his
head, winked knowingly, and said, 'She was far too pretty to live alone,' and
deemed it the old story over again—a waif lost in London.
 CHAPTER XVIII.

THE TERRIBLE MISTAKE.

Dulcie had thought that no possible harm could accrue to her from
rambling or sitting in that beautiful Park alone, and watching the children
playing with their hoops along the gravelled walk. With whom could she
go? She had no one to escort her. She knew not that it was not quite
etiquette for a young lady to be there alone and unattended; but the event
that occurred to her was one which she could never have anticipated.

She had sat for some time, absorbed in her own thoughts, on one of the
rustic sofas not far from Stanhope Gate, all unaware that an odd-looking
and mean-looking, but carefully dressed little man had been hovering near
her, and observing her closely with his keen small ferret-like eyes, and with
an expression of deep interest, destitute, however, of the slightest
admiration, and with a kind of sardonic and stereotyped smile in which
mirth bore no part.

He scanned her features from time to time, grinned to himself, and ever
and anon consulted something concealed in his hand.

'Golden hair—sealskin jacket—sable muff—hat and feather—a silver

necklet—all right,' he muttered, and then he advanced close towards her.

Dulcie looked up at him with surprise, and then with an emotion of

alarm, mingled with confusion, which he was neither slow to see nor
misinterpret—

'May I ask your name?' said he in a mild tone.

'Miss Carlyon—Dulcie Carlyon.'

'Ah! you speak good English.'

 'I am English.'

'And not a furriner?'

'No,' replied Dulcie in growing alarm.

'But you reside in London, just now?'

'Just now—yes,' said Dulcie, seeing that he was comparing her face with
that of a photo in his hand.

'With your family—friends?'

'I have no family—no friends,' said Dulcie, with a sob in her throat, and
starting up to withdraw in great alarm.

'Just so—not here, but at Ostend, perhaps.'

Thinking her questioner was mad or intoxicated, Dulcie, in growing

terror, was about to move away when he laid a hand very decidedly on her
left arm.

'Leave me,' she exclaimed, and on looking around her terror increased on
seeing that no male aid was near her; 'who are you that ask these questions
—that dare to molest me?'

'My name is Grabbley—Mr. Gilpin Grabbley, of Scotland Yard—oh,

you'll know enough o' me, my dear, before I'm done with you. Come along:
you're wanted partiklar—you are. Will you walk with me quietly?'

Perceiving that she was about to utter a shriek, he grasped her arm more
tightly, even to the bruising of her soft tender skin, and said in a sharp
hissing tone:

'Don't—don't make a row: 'taint no use, my beauty—you must come

along with me.'

'Oh, what do you mean?' moaned Dulcie, almost incapable of standing

now.
 'Mean—why, that you are my prisoner, that is all.'

'Am I mad or dreaming? Oh, sir, this is some dreadful mistake.'

'No mistake at all,' said Mr. Grabbley tauntingly.

They were out in Park Lane now, and Dulcie cast a despairing glance at
the many closed and shuttered windows of the mansions there, as if she
would summon aid.

'Look here, gal,' said the detective, for such Mr. Grabbley was, 'I have
orders to arrest the original of this fotygraf—you are that original—look!
don't you see yourself, as if in a looking-glass?'

Dulcie did look, with a kind of horrible fascination, and recognised in it

a very striking resemblance to her face and dress—even to the luckless
silver locket and chain.

Mr. Grabbley utilised the moments of her bewilderment. He stopped a

passing cab—half lifted, half thrust her in.

'Marlborough Street,' said he to the driver, and they were driven off.

'Of what am I accused?' said Dulcie, driven desperate now.

'Robbery on a railway—that's all; and you knows all about it—the when
and the where.'

If not the victim of some deliberate outrage, she was certainly the victim
of some inexplicable mistake which might yet be explained; anyway in her
ignorance and in her wild fear she strove to elicit succour from passers-by,
till Mr. Grabbley closed the rattling glasses of the cab and held her firmly,
while, like one in a dreadful dream, she was rapidly driven through Berkley
Square, across Bond Street and Regent Street, to their destination, where,
when the cab stopped, she was quickly taken indoors, through a passage, in
which several police officers and odd, repulsive-looking people of both
sexes were loitering about, and whence she was conveyed by the inexorable
Grabbley, to whom all appeals were vain, and left in a state of semi-
stupefaction—after being led down a long corridor, having many doors
opening on each side thereof—in a small bare room—a den it seemed, and
if not quite a prison cell, yet dreary, cold, and comfortless enough to
suggest the idea of being one.

She heard a key turned upon her, and felt that now—more than ever—
she was a prisoner!

She had no sense of indignation as yet—only a wild and clamorous one

of fear, or dread, she knew not of what—of being disgraced, and, it might
be, the victim of a mad-man's freak. She was in utter solitude, and no sound
seemed to be there but the loud beating of her heart.

Past grief and anxiety had rendered her very weak and unable to
withstand the tension on her nerves caused by this astounding accusation
and catastrophe, of which she could neither calculate nor see the end. Then
an exhaustion that was utter and complete followed, and for a time she was
physically and mentally prostrate—in that awful sense of desolation and
heart-broken grief that God in His mercy permits few to suffer.... So passed
the night.

'A person—a gentleman,' said a commissionaire at the Rag doubtfully to

Villiers as he entered the vestibule, 'has been waiting here for nearly an
hour for you, sir.'

'Oh—it is you, Mr.—Mr.——'

'Grabbley, sir,' said the little man affably, his ferret eyes twinkling, and
his vulgar face rippling over with a smile.

'You have some news, I suppose?'

'Yes, sir, I've nabbed her.'

'When?'

'Yesterday morning.'

'Where?'
 'In Hyde Park—nigh Stanhope Gate. She speaks English uncommonly
well to be a furriner.'

'That's sharp work! You are a clever fellow, Grabbley. Was my pocket-
book found upon her?'

'We did not search her, but she is locked up at Marlborough Street, where
I would like you to see and identify her before making out the matter in the
charge sheet.'

'All right—get a cab. Come with me, Hammersley, and I'll show you my
little Belgienne.'

Hammersley went unwillingly, as it was pretty close on the time he had

now begun to visit Finella at her grandmother's residence, and he cast
longing eyes at the windows of the latter as he and his two companions
were driven out of the square.

'A horrid atmosphere, and a horrid place in all its details,' he muttered,
when the scene of Dulcie's detention was reached, and throwing away the
fag end of a cheap cigar Mr. Grabbley, with an expression of no small
satisfaction, puckering his visage, unlocked and threw open the door—a
sound which roused Dulcie from her stupefied state—and starting up she
stood before them, trembling in every fibre, with a hunted expression in her
dark blue eyes and a gathering hope in her breast, to find herself confronted
by two such men of unexceptionable appearance and bearing as
Hammersley and Villiers, who raised his hat, and turning with astonishment
and some dismay to the police official said sharply:

'This is some great—some truly infernal mistake!'

'A mistake—how, sir?' asked Grabbley.

'This young lady is not the person whose photo I gave you.'

'They seems as like as two peas.'

 'The likeness, I admit, is great, but the Belgian girl, I told you, could not
speak a word of English, or scarcely so. I have to offer you a thousand
apologies, though the mistake is not mine, but that of this man,' said
Villiers, bowing low to Dulcie, greatly impressed by the sweetness of her
beauty and terror of the predicament in which she had been placed.

'So it's a mistake after all, young gal,' growled Mr. Grabbley, with
intense disappointment and reluctance to relinquish his prey.

'And may I go, sir?' said Dulcie piteously to Villiers.

'Most certainly—you are free,' replied Villiers, who was again about to
apologize and explain, but the girl, like a hunted creature, drew her veil
tightly across her tear-blotched face, rushed along the dingy corridor, and
gained the street in an instant.

That she was a lady in every sense of tone and bearing was evident, and
Villiers felt overcome with shame and contrition, and swore in pretty round
terms at the crestfallen Grabbley.

'This is a devil of a mistake!' said the latter as he scratched his head in

dire perplexity.

'A mistake we have not, perhaps, heard the end of. Who is she?' asked
Villiers.

'I don't know.'

'Did she give you no name?'

'Yes—here it is,' said Grabbley, producing a dirty note-book; 'Dulcie

Carlyon.'

'A curious and uncommon name.'

'Who do you say—Dulcie Carlyon?' exclaimed Hammersley, who had

hitherto been silent, starting forward; and on the name being repeated to
him once or twice, 'Great Heaven!' he exclaimed, 'if it should be the same!'
 'Same what—or who?'

'The girl to whom Florian is engaged: you remember Florian of ours.'

'Of course I do.'

'Golden hair, blue eyes, under middle height (how often he has described
her to me), and then the name—Dulcie Carlyon; it must be she—let us
overtake her! What an astounding introduction!'

But that was easier proposed than accomplished. On gaining the street
the two officers saw not a trace of Dulcie Carlyon, so all hope of
discovering her address was gone.

How Dulcie made her way back to her obscure lodgings she scarcely
knew; but she was long and seriously ill after this startling event.

There she felt as much at home as a creature so poor and friendless could
feel. Often she lay abed and seemed unconscious, but she was not so. Her
eyes were wide open, and their gaze wandered about; her lips were
generally dry and quivering. She was in the state which generally comes
after a severe mental shock; her mind refused to grasp the situation.

Until a drink was given her by Ellen, the kind little maid of all work, she
sometimes knew not how parched her throat was—how sorely athirst she
had been.

She was afraid to be left alone after that horrible accusation. In her
nervousness she feared that she might see her double—feel a touch, and on
turning find herself face to face with her own likeness, as that evil Lord of
Fettercairn did who sold his country.

Finella's astonishment to hear from Hammersley the story of where and

under what circumstances he had met Dulcie Carlyon was only equalled by
his own on learning that Florian, his comrade and brother-officer in the
Zulu war, and whilom private soldier in his company of the 24th, was heir
to a peerage, and the cousin of his affianced wife, Finella Melfort.
 For so it was. Lord and Lady Fettercairn had undergone so much in the
mismanagement of family matters latterly, and in years long past, that they
were now well disposed to let Finella alone, and in all conscience they
could not expect her to give to Florian (if he ever returned) the love she had
never given to the now vanished Shafto.

'Vivian, you must find out the address of dear Dulcie,' said she.

'If I can.'

'You must. I shall want her as one of my bridesmaids.'

From this we may presume that matters between these two were all in
fair training now.

'Your wish would delight Villiers, my groomsman, who has been

sorrowing about her ever since the time of that terrible mistake.'

CHAPTER XIX.

DULCIE'S VISITOR.

On an afternoon subsequent to this episode Dulcie was lost in a day-

dream, born of her own sad thoughts, her soft blue eyes fixed vacantly on
the hideous and dingy brick edifices of the thoroughfare in which she dwelt;
and when roused therefrom by the little maid of all work, she gazed at her
with a somewhat dazed expression.

'What is it, Ellen?' she asked.

'A gentleman, miss, wishes to see you.'

Alarm—dread, she knew not of what, was her first idea now.
 'Who is he?' she asked.

'I don't know, miss.'

'Is he old or young?'

'Young.'

'Then he can't be the vicar?'

'Oh, lawk, no, miss, he ain't a bit like a clergyman,' replied the
housemaid, laughing.

'Ask his business, Ellen.'

She was almost relapsing into her dream again, when she was startled by
seeing a man appear beside her.

'Dulcie?' said a voice, that made her heart thrill.

She sprang up to find herself confronted by a gentleman, whose face,

though thin and worn, seemed deeply tanned by the sun, so that his
scorched neck was absolutely red; his dark moustache was thick and heavy,
his shoulders broad and square.

'Dearest Dulcie, don't you know me?' said he, holding out his hands and
arms.

'Florian—is this you—really you?'

'I thought you would not quite forget me.'

'Forget you!' said Dulcie, in a low and piercing voice, as she fell upon
his breast, and his loving arms went closely round her.

'Oh, Florian, I did not know you were in England!'

'We were landed at Plymouth three days ago. I got your address from
good old Paul Pentreath, procured leave of absence, and came on here
without a moment's delay, my own darling.'

For some minutes neither could find words to speak, so supreme was the
mutual happiness of the sudden reunion.

'How brown you are! but how thin, and how much older you look!' said
Dulcie, surveying him with bright but tearful eyes. 'I can scarcely believe
you to be the same Florian that left me only a year ago or so.'

'Ay, Dulcie, pet; but soldiering, especially soldiering in the ranks, takes a
lot out of a fellow. But I am the same Florian that left you then, with a
heavy and hopeless heart indeed.'

'And now——'

'Now I shall leave you no more.'

'What dreadful places you must have been in, Florian; what dangers you
have faced; what sufferings undergone, my love!'

'The thought of you lightened and brightened them all to me, Dulcie,'
said he, while into her bright little English face came that wonderful and
adoring smile only possible on the lips and in the eyes of a woman who is
in love, and for the object of her love.

She told him of her simple plans and humble prospects, of her hope in
the vicar, why she had left Craigengowan, and how she came to be in that
poor and cheap lodging-room near Oxford Street.

'We must not lose sight of each other now, my darling,' said he, as she
nestled her face on his breast. 'Let us get married at once, love, and then it
must be service in India for me. Are you ready to face heat, it may be fever,
and Heaven knows what more, Dulcie?'

'Every peril, if with you!'

'My brave little soldier's wife! But suppose we grow tired of each other?'

'You wicked wag!—why think of such a thing?'

 'Married folks do sometimes,' said he, laughing.

'Then we should part—I would run away.'

'As a preliminary to that we must be united, Dulcie; so when will you be

ready to marry me?'

'Oh, Florian!'

'You must say—we have little time to lose.'

'I have no trousseau to get—and no money for it—we are so poor,

Florian.'

'But rich in love—well then—when?'

'I don't know,' was the shy, coy answer.

'This day three weeks—I can afford even a special license, Dulcie.'

'So be it, dear Florian.'

'Then I shall write to good old Paul Pentreath about it, and then we must
resolutely think of turning our steps to India. We could not afford to live at
home.'

Their little plans—little, though of vast importance to them—were all

arranged, and discussed so sweetly, so lovingly, again and again, and at last
he left her for his hotel, which was not far off, in Oxford Street, with a
promise to call for her again betimes on the morrow; and to Dulcie it
seemed as if the sun had come with a glorious burst of radiance at last into
the cloudy atmosphere of her life; that joy had come with it; and that,
sorrow and tears—save those of happiness—had gone for ever.

So, in three weeks the life of Dulcie Carlyon would be over; and the life
of Dulcie MacIan would begin.

Dulcie MacIan—how odd it seemed to sound!

 And so, at the appointed time, Mr. Paul Pentreath, summoned to London
for the special occasion, tied the 'fatal knot' of the matrimonial noose for
these two young people; and Dulcie, as in a dream, heard him ask:

'Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband, to live together after
God's ordinance, in the holy estate of matrimony?'

And in a clear and confident tone little Dulcie said, 'I will,' as she loved,
frankly—loved 'as a fair honest English maiden may with her heart on her
lips, and all her soul shining out of her truthful eyes.'

So the marriage passed quietly; there were no lawyers, dressmakers,

outfitters, and all those other folks who never keep time; no attendants, save
Dulcie's landlady, the clerk, and honest Tom Tyrrell, whose 'time being out,'
contrived to turn up about this crisis to wish, with all the ardour of his
gallant heart, his whilom comrade and officer, with his fair young bride,
'God speed;' and after a quiet little honeymoon at Richmond—no further off
—Florian set forth to the Horse Guards for the purpose of effecting an
exchange to a regiment in India; but a letter that came to him altered all his
views and plans.

It was from Mr. Kenneth Kippilaw, W.S., who had seen the marriage
announced in a public print, and had written at once to Florian and to Lord
Fettercairn.

When Abou Hassan, the merchant of Bagdad, woke up on that

remarkable morning, and he found himself in the palace of Haroun al
Raschid, and treated as the latter by all the beautiful ladies of the Court, and
the black slaves around his couch, he was scarcely more astonished than our
poor Lieutenant of Infantry, when he found himself to be the heir of
Craigengowan and Fettercairn!

He then knew all about Shafto's villainy, yet in the gentleness of his
spirit he joined with Dulcie in saying:

'Poor creature! God help and forgive him, as freely as I do.'

 Sooth to say, Dulcie was perhaps less astonished on finding Florian was
the true heir; she had ever thought there was some mystery in the new
position and new relationship, so suddenly assumed by the wily Shafto,
whose tissue of falsehoods had, as usual in such cases, broken down by an
unthought-of point.

Amid the sudden splendour of his prospects, such was his simplicity of
character, that one of Florian's first thoughts was of a cosy cottage at
Craigengowan for his comrade Tom Tyrrell!

The news spread like wildfire through all the Mearns, Angus, and
everywhere else. It proved a great godsend, and the vicinity of Inverbervie
was besieged by folks connected with the press, all eager to glean the last
authentic information from Craigengowan, and even Grapeston, the butler,
and MacCrupper, the head groom, were interviewed and treated—the
former with wine, and the latter copiously with whisky and water—on the
subject.

To Lady Fettercairn the marriage of Florian proved, of course, a cause of

bitter mortification.

'Another mesalliance—like father, like son!' she exclaimed; 'now indeed

we shall be associated with Freethinkers, franchise folks, dynamiters, and
all kinds of dreadful people!' she wailed out.

The first alleged and hurriedly accepted heir had proved a ruinous
blackleg; the second and true one was Flora MacIan's son beyond all doubt
—a gallant young fellow, who had 'gone through the ranks to a
commission!' but, alas! he had married Dulcie Carlyon—the Devonshire
lawyer's daughter—her 'companion,' whom she had treated with no small
contumely at Craigengowan, where she was now to be welcomed as a bride
and the future Lady Fettercairn!

It was all too much for the aristocratic brain of the present holder of that
rank.

She sat in her boudoir at Craigengowan; it was small, but wonderfully

pretty; the chairs were all of ivory and gilt; the walls hung with pale blue
silk, embroidered with flowers; and she thought ruefully of the time when
—if her Lord predeceased her—she would have to quit all that, and take up
her abode at Finella Lodge, the humble dower-house—giving place to
Dulcie Carlyon. It was all too horrible to think of!

But the couple were coming, and already she could hear the distant
cheers of the tenantry.

Several young ladies—among them the daughters of Mr. Kippilaw—

were seated about the room in expectation and in lounging attitudes, their
garden bonnets or riding habits showing how they had been recently
occupied.

A distant sound—was it of carriage-wheels—made her lapdog bark.

'Down, Snap—be quiet,' said Lady Fettercairn with more asperity than
was her wont to that plethoric and pampered cur.

The volunteers were under arms on the lawn to salute Florian Melfort as
a hero from Zululand; and a salute to his bride was boomed forth from an
old battery of 6-pounders on the terrace; a banner was flaunting on the old
tower, above all the vanes and turrets; bells were clashing in the distant kirk
spire, and the cheers of the Craigengowan tenantry rang up amid the ancient
trees in welcome to the heir of Fettercairn and his winsome young wife.

Lord Fettercairn received them at the door with what grace he might; but
the hands of many others were held forth to him, among others those of old
Kenneth Kippilaw, Madelon Galbraith, the aged butler, and Sandy
MacCrupper.

All shadows had fled away, and the bright sunshine of heaven was over
Craigengowan and in the hearts of all there.

Even Lady Fettercairn, when she met Florian and saw how like her
youngest son and his portrait he looked, felt all that she had of a mother's
heart go forth to him as it had never done to the vanished Shafto; while
Florian, modest and gentle Florian, whose heart had never quailed before
the enemy, now felt, as he said to Dulcie, somewhat 'dashed' on being