,
advancing to the third window, which was open.

It was Mary Ponsonby.

'Mary!'

'You here?--They said you were not at home!'

'My father!--Where?'

'He is not come down. He is as well as possible. We came at eleven
last night. I found I was not wanted,' added Mary, with a degree of
agitation, that made him conclude that she had lost her father.

One step he made to find the Earl, but too much excited to move away or
to stand still, he came towards her, wrung her hand in a more real way
than in his first bewildered surprise, and exclaimed in transport, 'O
Mary! Mary! to have you back again!' then, remembering his inference,
added, low and gravely, 'It makes me selfish--I was not thinking of
your grief.'

'Never mind,' said Mary, smiling, though her eyes overflowed, 'I must
be glad to be at home again, and such a welcome as this--'

'O Mary, Mary!' he cried, nearly beside himself, 'I have not known what
to do without you! You will believe it now, won't you?'--oh, won't
you?'

Mary would have been a wonderful person had she not instantly and
utterly forgotten all her conclusions from Frampton's having declared
him gone to Beauchastel for an unlimited time; but all she did was to
turn away her crimson tearful face, and reply, 'Your father would not
wish it now.'

'Then the speculations have failed? So much the better!'

'No, no! he must tell you--'

She was trying to withdraw her hand, when Lord Ormersfield opened the
door, and in the moment of his amazed 'Louis!' Mary had fled.

'What is it? oh! what is it, father? cried Louis for all greeting, 'why
can she say you would not wish it now?'

'Wish it? wish what?' asked the Earl, without the intuitive perception
of the meaning of the pronoun.

'What you have always wished--Mary and me--What is the only happiness
that life can offer me!'

'If I wished it a year ago, I could only wish it the more now,' said
the Earl. 'But how is this?--I fully believed you committed to Miss
Conway.'

'Miss Conway! Miss Conway!' burst out Louis, in a frenzy. 'Because
Jem Frost was in love with her himself, he fancied every one else must
be the same, and now he will be married to her before Christmas, so
that's disposed of. As to my feeling for her a particle, a shred of
what I do for Mary, it was a mere fiction--a romance, an impossibility.'

'I do not understand you, Louis. Why did you not find this out before?'

'Mrs. Ponsonby called it my duty to test my f