down country, and wrote to tell you that I would meet you here. My letter was to await you at the postoffice-I suppose you never applied for it.'

'We have had too much to think of, dear papa, since our arrival; but it does not matter, now that we have met and I know you are safe.'

'Yes,' pursued the captain; that letter of yours awoke memories which had not been dead, but dormant, for years; and your appeal on behalf of your friend recalled to me my own conduct in a similar case, which presented itself to me in a new light. I know now that I was harsh and cold——'

'My dear father,' cried May, 'what is it that you mean? I wrote to you about a stranger.'

a

"Truly; but your story was so like another story that I could not separate the two. I had even presentiment-and I still have it— that a strange discovery was in store for me; and I was so anxious to see the friend, to whom you seem to be attached by such strong sympathies, that I could not wait for your arrival, but resolved to meet you on the road.'

'And you wish to see Mrs Beltravers now?' said May.

'I do; I cannot rest until I know whether or not my presentiment has any foundation.'

And what shall I tell her?'

'Tell her simply that, knowing all you have told me, I will do everything in my power to bring about a reconciliation with her husband.'

A few minutes afterwards Mrs. Beltravers was clasped in her husband's arms.

CHAPTER LX.

HAPPINESS-CECIL HALIDAME-A

MARRIAGE.

There were two days more of anxiety, during which the movements of the rebels were undecided; but our friends at Banglepore were so happy among themselves that they did not realise the danger of the situation. Captain Pemberton was a changed and, I firmly believe,

a happy man. His stern sense of justice was forgotten, except as the subject of reproaches to himself; and he made such large allowances for human failings that he would have been prepared to accept his worst enemies as his dearest friends. As for Mrs. Beltravers-who resumed, by the way, her own name punctually on the following morning-her happy nature could always meet happiness half way; and she luxuriated and ripened, if I may so express it, as if under the influence of a new sun. It is mere nonsense to suppose that people of happy temperament do not feel as others

do. Roses in full bloom may be just as miserable, when they ought to be, as less favoured flowers, and we must allow them to be miserable in their own way. Had Mrs. Pemberton allowed the thorns to gain an ascendancy, her course of life, after that terrible night in Calcutta, would have been such that she had never dared to meet her husband again. As for May, her happiness was complete indeed. The instinct of the heart, which had drawn her to her mother, and her mother to her, was not to be set down to accident, or called by any such convenient term as 'a coincidence.' There was a higher motive power in the matter, and her happiness was elevated by the consciousness. How low to her now seemed the happiness which she felt when receiving the plaudits of the public in her celebrated character of Bianca, in 'Love and Liberty; or, the Daughter of the Doge.' It was the difference between being the person playing Bianca and being Bianca herself.

There was another element, too, in May's happiness, and not, perhaps, the least important. She had not given Windermere a formal answer as yet. She reproached herself already for concealment when Cecil Halidame had gained, for a time, an influence over her. She resolved that she would not again err; and she waited to see her father before coming to a final decision. And now came the time to tell him all. The communication was received as May knew that it would be; so there was no more hesitation, and the