Hinton, there is another thing which
gives me great joy just now."

"And that?" said Hinton.

"Last night something very wonderful happened. I was at home not two
hours, when I was surprised by a visit from one whom I had never seen
before and whom I had supposed to be in his grave for over twenty years.
My dear mother had one brother who went to Australia shortly after her
marriage. From Australia the news reached her of his death. He was not
dead; he came back again. I had a visit from that uncle last night."

"How strange!" said Hinton.

"Yes; I have not heard his story yet. He met my little Daisy in Regent's
Park, and found out who she was through her likeness to my mother. Is it
not all like a romance? I had not an idea who the dear old man was when
he came to visit me last night; but how glad I am now to feel that my
own mother's brother is still alive!"

Hinton asked a few more questions; then after many promises of effecting
a meeting very soon between Charlotte and little Harold he went away. He
was puzzled by Mrs. Home. The anxious woman he had thought of, whose sad
face often haunted him, was gone, and another peaceful, happy, almost
beautiful in her serenity, had come in her place. Her joy at Harold's
recovery was both natural and right; but where had the money cares
vanished to? Surely Charlotte's fifty pounds could not have done more
than pay the Torquay trip. As to her delight over her Australian uncle's
return, he rather wondered at it, and then forgot it. He little guessed,
as he allowed it to vanish from his mind, how it was yet to influence
the fate of more lives than his.

CHAPTER XXXII.

JASPER'S TERROR.

Uncle Jasper, too, left Charlotte on that special morning with some
displeasure, some surprise, and some anxiety. Remorse, as I have said,
did not visit the man. Long ago, a very long time ago now, he and his
brother John had touched an evil thing. For both men the natural
consequences followed; but how differently? John wanted to fling the
base defilement from his soul; Jasper wanted so to bury it there, so
deftly, so cleverly to hide it within his very heart of hearts, that it
should not appear to dishonor him in the eyes of his fellow-men. Of the
final judgment and its disclosure he never thought. It was his inability
to cover up the secret; it was his ever-growing knowledge that the
garment was neither long enough nor broad enough to wrap it round, that
caused his anxiety fro