certainly not unreasonable," I answered, with a look into her
eyes. "It is the most reasonable chance that I have ever come across
in the whole of my life!"

"Why?" she answered, with a look of mischief in her dark blue eyes.

"Because," I answered fervently, with a little tremor in my voice, "it
has given me the chance of spending three weeks near you!

"Let us go and look at the flying fish," she answered hastily, to
change the conversation. "I do so love to see them."

Yes, I was daily becoming more and more attached to her; for the first
time in my long career of flirtation I was beginning to find out what
love _really_ meant.

I was falling in love with a little divinity twelve years my junior,
and from the depths of my knowledge I expected she would very justly
make a fool of me--not intentionally, perhaps, but in effect the
same--and laugh at me for my pains.

It seemed very bitter to think of as I saw her walking--and laughing
and talking too--with St. Nivel who was six years my junior. It seemed
to me, in my growing jealousy, an ideal match for her.

I forgot that young ladies never fall in love with the persons they are
expected to, but invariably go off on an unknown tangent of their own,
in obedience to the same law of Nature, perhaps, which causes an
unusually tall girl to lose her heart to a very diminutive--though
generally very consequential--little man.

In the contemplation of the varied charms of Dolores d'Alta, I almost
forgot my precious casket, confided in fear and trembling to the care
of the captain, and locked up by him in the ship's strong room in my
presence and in the presence of St. Nivel.

In due course we came to Coruna, or Corunna as we more commonly call
it, and there I had the delight of strolling about the old
fortifications all alone with Dolores and showing her the tomb of Sir
John Moore, while St. Nivel obligingly took charge of her aunt, and
solicitously kept her out of earshot. The old lady had lived long
enough in England to appreciate the attentions of a lord, and he a rich
one, without designs on her niece's fortune.

Yes, that fortune was my stumbling-block; I learned of it from old Sir
Rupert Frampton, our minister to Aquazilia, who was travelling back to
his post on the _Oceana_.

"I really don't suppose," he said, one evening in the smoking-room,
nodding his head sententiously, "that old Don Juan d'Alta knows what he
is worth; neither do I suppose that he c