going for her at once, if you do not object to having her in the
house, Vi--you or the captain."

Both promptly replied that they would be glad to have her there, and
Harold at once set out upon his errand.

For some days Chester lay half unconscious, and apparently hovering
upon the brink of the grave, while those who loved him watched and
waited in intense anxiety. Then a change came, and the doctors said he
would recover. Lucilla heard it with a burst of weeping that seemed
more like the expression of despair and sorrow than the relief and joy
that really filled her heart.

It was her father who told her the glad news, and they were alone
together in the library. He drew her into his arms and held her close.

"It is altogether glad news, dear child," he said; "Chester is a
Christian and a young man of talent who will lead a useful life, I
think, and it would have been a bitter sorrow to have had him fall a
victim to that worthless, cowardly convict."

"And in my defence," she sobbed. "Oh, papa, it makes my heart ache to
think how he has suffered because of risking his life in the effort to
save mine."

"Yes; I am very grateful to him--so grateful that I feel I can refuse
him nothing that he may ask of me--even though it should be the the
hand of my dear eldest daughter."

She gave him a look of surprise, while her cheek grew hot with
blushes.

"You know that he wants it--that he loves you. He made it very plain
as we stood by him in the road soon after he fell."

"Yes, sir; and I have thought of it very often since. It surprised me
very much, for I had never thought of him as a lover."

"And how is it now?" asked her father, as she paused; "do you care for
him at all? can you give him any return of affection?"

"Papa," she said, hiding her blushing face on his shoulder, and
speaking in so low a tone that he scarcely caught the words, "I seem
to have learned to love him since knowing of his love to me and that
he had almost, if not quite, thrown away his own life to save mine.
But you are not willing that he should tell his love?--not willing to
give me to him, however much he may desire it?"

"I am too grateful to him to refuse him anything he may ask for--even
to the daughter who is so dear to me that I can scarcely bear the
thought of resigning her to another."

"Oh, father, how could I ever endure to be parted from you!" she
cried, clinging more closely to him.

"Dear child," he said, holding he