once he is gone. I did not tell him this, as you may imagine, so there is no time to lose in packing up. That was what I meant by saying you should help me."

With the courage of a true heart, she rose at once and set to work. I aided her willingly; we made such good despatch, that three days after the departure of Cornelius we had left the Grove and reached Leigh. Miss Murray, with whom Cornelius and Kate had always kept up an occasional correspondence, had, through the medium of Abby, kindly provided our future home with the first necessaries of beds, chairs, and tables; the rest, Kate said, would come in time.

The village through which we passed looked the same quiet place I had left it five years before. Few changes had occurred; the only strangeness was that men and women whose faces I had not forgotten, stared at us, and knew me not.

"How very odd!" I said to Kate, "I am sure that was Mr. Jenning, who keeps the dancing academy. He ought to know me, ought he not, Kate? I was one of his pupils. Papa said I should know how to dance, for that it gave a graceful carriage. I believe he used to dance himself when he was quite a young man, but I never saw him. Do you feel uuwell, Kate?"

She made a sign of denial. I continued—

"Do you see that path, Kate? Well, it leads to my grandfather's house. I wonder if he still lives in it with Mrs. Marks and my cousin Edith! I will show you to-morrow the place where I felt tired, and Cornelius carried me to Ryde. Why, Kate, we need not go on; this is Rock Cottage; I forgot you did not know it."

"Yes, there it stood, the same isolated white-washed, low-roofed dwelling in its lone garden. My tears rushed forth as I saw again the home where I had been reared, and where my father had died. Kate opened the door, but as she crossed the threshold she turned deadly pale, and sank rather than sat in the nearest chair.

"Kate!" I cried, quite alarmed, "what is the matter with you?"

I passed my arm around her neck; she gave me a most sorrowful look, then laid her head on my shoulder, and cried as if her heart would break.

"Oh, Kate!" I said, much distressed, "he has promised to be back in two years, and indeed he will keep his word."

She did not seem to heed me.

"It was here," she murmured, "yes, it was here he died."

This time I looked at her silent and astonished.

"Oh, Daisy!" she cried, clasping her hands and looking up too, "is it possible that you neither know nor guess that I was to have been your father's wife, and that you ought to have been my child?"

Her passionate tone went through my very heart.

"You, Kate!" I said; "you!"

"Yes," she replied, weeping more slowly; "it was to have been—it was not—he died here alone, I was far away."

Miss O'Reilly made me feel very strangely. I had never known my mother. I drew closer to her, and after a while I said—

"Why did you not marry him?"

"He was poor, and I had the child to rear; I could not bear to bring two burdens upon him; it was pride, he thought it was mistrust, and married another; I had no right to complain, nor did I; but it was then I took to being so fond of the boy, just I suppose because he had cost me so dear."

"But why did you not marry Papa after Mamma died?" I inquired.

"He never asked me, child," and she bowed her head with sad and humble resignation; "I thought he would, and I should have been glad to have had him, but perhaps he could not quite forgive my having once preferred my little brother to my grown-up lover; perhaps he thought me altered, and no longer the pretty girl he had courted: whatever it was, he did not ask me; and yet how good and friendly it was of him to help me as he did to rear the boy for whom I had given him up! I sometimes think he liked me in his heart, for Cornelius has often told me how my name was the last he uttered; and I cannot help fancying he meant I was to have the care of you. Oh! Midge, Midge," she added, looking me in the face very wistfully, "I have loved you very dearly, because you were his child, but I have often remembered that you ought also to have been mine."

"If you had been Papa's wife, I mean his first wife," I said very earnestly, "I should have been the niece of Cornelius, should I not, Kate?"

"You would have been my child."

"And his niece too, Kate."

"Do not be always thinking of Cornelius, Daisy."

"Oh! Kate, Uncle Cornelius has such a pleasant sound!"

She caressed me sadly; then we rose, went over the house together, and finally surveyed the garden. All trace of man's art had vanished from the spot, on which nature had bestowed a beauty and wild grace its culture had never known. The hedge of gorse now enclosed but a green wilderness of high waving grass, weeds, and wild flowers. Other flowers there were none, and the tender shrubs uncared for, had perished, blighted by the keen sea-breeze; the pine trees alone still stood and looked the same as I had left them, over their changed domain. For awhile we looked down from the stone steps where Cornelius had found me lying so desolate, then Kate descended, and said to me—

"Daisy, we will not change much. We will spoil as little as we can the freshness of the place. I like that green grass, those weeds that hide the brown earth so well, those long trailing creepers and wild flowers. We will just clear the path, add a few of the plants we like, give the whole a look of home, and leave what is beautiful as we found it."

"Kate," I exclaimed, hastening down to the pine-trees, "here is the sea. You have not yet had a good view of it, do come and look. Do you remember how I got up on the table in the studio to get a sight of it? Oh! is it not a grand thing?"

She smiled at my enthusiasm, and sat down on the wooden bench, which still stood in its old place. My heart swelled as I remembered that there I had received my father's embrace, but I would not sadden her by recalling it; I shaded my eyes with my hand to hide my tears, and whilst they flowed I looked long and silently on that eternal ocean on which, for nearly five years, I had not gazed.

It still rolled its heavy waters with majestic calmness; they now looked dark as molten lead, a white line of surf marking where they broke on the beach. The day had been grey and cloudy, and the sun was setting veiled and without splendour. For awhile the heavy clouds resting on the low, sea-bound horizon, still wore a reddish tint, like the smouldering ashes of a spent fire. Like them too they suddenly grew pale. Light mists, advancing from the sea, shrouded the coast below, distinctness faded away from every object, and the penetrating chillness of evening began to spread upon the air. Kate rose; we went in; as we ascended the steps she turned hack, she looked on the wild garden, on the pine-trees whose dark and spreading branches now moved to the evening breeze with a low rustling sound, at that broad sky crossed by swift clouds and hanging over the sea, and with a sigh she said—

"It was just like him, to come and live here,—he always liked wild places."

We entered the house, there to spend a quiet subdued evening, talking of him who had scarcely left us, and to whose return I already looked forward.

In a week we were settled at Rock Cottage. A little black-eyed girl, answering to the name of Jane, was our only servant. We led a humble, yet happy, homely life, to which the thought of the absent one lent something of the charm we once had found in his presence.

Household