e to you."

"Your wife?" Mistress Mercy cried. "You don't say you have brought
home a wife, Roger?"

"That do I, aunt. She is a princess, in her own country; but what
is much better, she is the dearest of women, and all but gave her
life to save mine."

Mistress Mercy looked grave, and was about to speak, when Roger
interrupted her.

"I know what you are about to say, aunt. The thought of having a
foreign woman for your niece is shocking to you. Never mind, leave
it unsaid, until you have seen her.

"But as we go, let us call in and see Dorothy, and take her on with
us. I should wish her to be one of the first to welcome my wife."

Dorothy was as astonished as the others had been, when they arrived
at her house with Roger; and cast a meaning glance at him, when she
heard that he had brought home a wife.

"I know what you are thinking of, Dorothy--our parting on the hoe."

Dorothy laughed.

"I meant it when I said it, Dorothy, and meant it for a good time
afterwards. It was only when it seemed that I should never come
back again that I fell in love with some one else; and when you
have heard my story, and know what she did for me, and how much I
owe her, and come to love her for herself, you won't blame me."

"I don't blame you one bit, Roger," she said, frankly. "When you
went away, we thought we cared for each other; but of course we
were only boy and girl then, and when I grew up and you did not
come home, and it seemed that you never would come home, as you
say, I fell in love with someone else.

"And now I will put on my hood, and come round and see your wife.
What is her name?"

"Her name is Amenche," Roger said; "and Amenche I mean to call her.
When she was christened--for of course she had to be christened
before we were married--Father Olmedo said she must have a
Christian name, and christened her Caterina; but for all that her
name is Amenche, and we mean to stick to it.

"But come along; she has been an hour alone in this strange place,
already, and must begin to think that I have run away from her."

Dorothy and Agnes were at once won by the soft beauty of the
dark-skinned princess; and when, that evening, Roger told the story
of all that had taken place in Mexico, Dame Mercy's last prejudice
vanished, and she took Amenche in her arms and kissed her tenderly.

"My dear," she said, "Roger has always been as a son to me, and
henceforth you will be as one of my daughters."

As to Diggory, h