s the only safe spot for finding him, sooner or later. The
equatorial he also directed to be forwarded to the same place. At this
time, too, he ventured to break Viviette's commands, and address a letter
to her, not knowing of the strange results that had followed his absence
from home.

It was February. The Transit was over, the scientific company had broken
up, and Swithin had steamed towards the Cape to take up his permanent
abode there, with a view to his great task of surveying, charting and
theorizing on those exceptional features in the southern skies which had
been but partially treated by the younger Herschel. Having entered Table
Bay and landed on the quay, he called at once at the post-office.

Two letters were handed him, and he found from the date that they had
been waiting there for some time. One of these epistles, which had a
weather-worn look as regarded the ink, and was in old-fashioned
penmanship, he knew to be from his grandmother. He opened it before he
had as much as glanced at the superscription of the second.

Besides immaterial portions, it contained the following:--

'J reckon you know by now of our main news this fall, but lest you
should not have heard of it J send the exact thing snipped out of the
newspaper. Nobody expected her to do it quite so soon; but it is said
hereabout that my lord bishop and my lady had been drawing nigh to an
understanding before the glum tidings of Sir Blount's taking of his
own life reached her; and the account of this wicked deed was so sore
afflicting to her mind, and made her poor heart so timid and low, that
in charity to my lady her few friends agreed on urging her to let the
bishop go on paying his court as before, notwithstanding she had not
been a widow-woman near so long as was thought. This, as it turned
out, she was willing to do; and when my lord asked her she told him
she would marry him at once or never. That's as J was told, and J had
it from those that know.'

The cutting from the newspaper was an ordinary announcement of marriage
between the Bishop of Melchester and Lady Constantine.

Swithin was so astounded at the intelligence of what for the nonce seemed
Viviette's wanton fickleness that he quite omitted to look at the second
letter; and remembered nothing about it till an hour afterwards, when
sitting in his own room at the hotel.

It was in her handwriting, but so altered that its supersc