race a melancholy in her eye. Adieu, my love; this epistle
ought to make up for past delinquencies.--Yours ever, Christabel.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

MILES' RETURN.

It was six years after his departure from home when Miles Trevor sailed
again for his native land. There had been some talk of his return
during the previous winter, and bitter indeed had been the
disappointment when it was again postponed, and postponed on account of
that ubiquitous person "my chum Gerard." The prospecting expedition of
Will Gerard and his partner had at last been blessed with success;--if
reports could be believed, with extraordinary success, for the opinion
of the experts who had visited the claim predicted for it an even
greater future than the Aladdin itself. Between the partners in the
venture a sufficient sum had been raised to enable the mine to be
"proved" by several shafts and cross-cuts, and the analyses of samples
produced were so abundantly satisfactory, that there could be no
difficulty in obtaining all the money necessary to thoroughly develop
the mine. Miles was intensely interested in his chum's prospects, which
to a certain extent were coincident with his own, for, according to
promise, he had been allowed to buy a share in the land, which, small as
it was, might turn out a more profitable investment than engineering.

It was decided that while one partner stayed on the spot, Miles should
fit in his holiday so as to be able to help Gerard with the work of
floating a company in England, an arrangement which it was believed
would necessitate but a short delay. As is invariably the case in these
affairs, however, matters took much longer to set in train than had been
originally expected, and it was a good six months later before the
welcome cablegram was received stating that the travellers were really
on their way.

Six years! Miles was a man of twenty-six, matured by a life of
enterprise and adventure. Betty admitted with horror to being "twenty-
four next birthday," and shivered at the remembrance that six more years
would bring her to that dreaded thirty which she had once considered the
"finis" of life. Jack and Jill were twenty, and if he were still a lad,
she was a very finished product indeed, the acknowledged belle of her
set, with a transparent satisfaction in her own success which would have
been called vanity in a less popular person, but which in her case was
indulgently voted as yet another charm