came. I wrote again, after a
little while, with the same result; and, in the mean time, the child had
grown fonder of me and dearer to me every day. I had hired a nursemaid
for her, and had taken an upper room for her nursery; but she spent the
greater part of her life with me, and I began to fancy that Providence
intended I should keep her with me for the rest of her days. She told me,
in her innocent childish way, that papa had never loved her as her mamma
did. He had been always out of doors till very, very late at night. She
had crept from her little bed sometimes when it was morning, quite light,
and had found mamma in the sitting-room, with no fire, and the candles
all burnt out, waiting for papa to come home.

"I put an advertisement, addressed to Mr. Percival Nowell, in the
_Times_ and in _Galignani_, for I felt that the child's future might
depend upon her father's acknowledgment of her in the present; but no
reply came to these advertisements, and I settled in my own mind that
this Nowell was a scoundrel, who had deliberately deserted his wife and
child.

"The possessions of the poor creature who was gone were of no great
value. There were some rather handsome clothes and a small collection of
jewelry--some of it modern, the rest curious and old-fashioned. These
latter articles I kept religiously, believing them to be family relics.
The clothes and the modern trinkets I caused to be sold, and the small
sum realised for them barely paid the expense of the funeral and grave.
The arrears of rent and all other arrears fell upon me. I paid them, and
then left Brighton with the child and nurse. I was born not twenty miles
from this place, and I had a fancy for ending my days in my native
county; so I came down to this part of the world, and looked about me a
little, living in farm-house lodgings here and there, until I found this
cottage to let one day, and decided upon settling at Lidford. And now you
know the whole story of Marian's adoption, Mr. Fenton. How happy we have
been together, or what she has been to me since that time, I could never
tell you."

"The story does you credit, sir; and I honour you for your goodness,"
said Gilbert Fenton.

"Goodness, pshaw!" cried the Captain, impetuously; "it has been a mere
matter of self-indulgence on my part. The child made herself necessary to
me from the very first. I was a solitary man, a confirmed bachelor, with
every prospect of becoming a hard, selfish old foge