f Mr. Gordon.

"No," replied his host, "but she is as dear to me as if she were."

He then related her history, to which the stranger listened with eager
interest, and at its close he not a little surprised Mr. Gordon by
remarking that he "had reason to believe that the young lady was his
own niece." He then gave a detailed account of his sister's return
from India, corresponding to the time of the shipwreck, and added,
"she is now an orphan, but if I am not mistaken in my supposition, she
is entitled to a handsome provision which her father bequeathed to her
in the hope of her yet being found."

Before many days had elapsed, sufficient evidence was forthcoming to
prove that by this strange, but lucky, accident of the shipwreck, the
long lost niece was found. The young heiress keenly felt leaving the
old castle, but to soften the wrench it was arranged that one of the
Misses Gordon should accompany her to Gottenburg, where her uncle had
long been settled as a merchant.

The sequel of this romance, as it is pointed out in the "Book of
Days,"[55] is equally astonishing. It seems that among the Scotch
merchants settled in the Swedish port, was Mr. Thomas Erskine--a
younger son of a younger brother of Sir William Erskine, of Cambo, in
Fife--an offshoot of the family of the Earl of Kellie--to whom Miss
Anne Gordon was married in the year 1771. A younger brother, named
Methven, ten years later married Joanna, a sister of Miss Gordon. It
was never contemplated that these two brothers would ever come near to
the peerage of their family--there being at one time seventeen persons
between them and the family titles; but in the year 1797 the baronet
of Cambo became Earl of Kellie, and two years later the title came to
the husband of Anne Gordon. In short, "these two daughters of Mr.
Gordon, of Ardoch, became in succession Countesses of Kellie in
consequence of the incident of the shipwrecked foundling, whom their
father's humanity had rescued from the waves."

FOOTNOTES:

[54] See "Dictionary of National Biography," xix., 242.

[55] "The Two Countesses of Kellie," ii. 41, 42.

CHAPTER XVII.

FATAL PASSION.

What dreadful havoc in the human breast
The passions make, when, unconfined and mad,
They burst, unguided by the mental eye,
The light of reason, which, in various ways,
Points them to good, or turns them back from ill!
THOMSON.

The annals of some of our old and respe