he Earlsforth natives. William's girls will have enough to
endure without a double eclipse!' and he laughed.

'I--I don't want--' faltered the mother.

'You don't want, no, but you can't help it,' he said, evidently with a
proud delight in her beauty. 'Now that I have seen the child,' he
added, 'I will make my way back to the hotel.'

'Will you--won't you stay to tea or dinner?' said his wife, beginning
with an imploring tone which hesitated as she reviewed possible chops
and her aunt's dismay.

'Thank you, I have ordered dinner at the hotel,' he answered, 'and
Gregorio is waiting for me with a cab. No doubt you will wish to make
arrangements with Madame--the old lady--and I will not trouble her
further to-night. I will send down Gregorio to-morrow morning, to tell
you what I arrange. An afternoon train, probably, as we shall go no
farther than London. You say Lady Kirkaldy called on you. We might
return her visit before starting, but I will let you know when I have
looked at the trains. My compliments to Miss Headworth. Good evening,
sweetest.' He held his wife in a fond embrace, kissing her brow and
cheeks and letting her cling to him, then added, 'Good evening, little
one,' with a good-natured careless gesture with which Nuttie was quite
content, for she had a certain loathing of the caresses that so charmed
her mother. And yet the command to make ready had been given with such
easy authority that the idea of resisting it had never even entered her
mind, though she stood still while her mother went out to the door with
him and watched him to the last.

Coming back, she threw her arms round her daughter, kissed her again
and again, and, with showers of the glad tears long repressed, cried,
'Oh, my Nuttie, my child, what joy! How shall I be thankful enough!
Your father, your dear father! Now it is all right.' Little sentences
of ecstasy such as these, interspersed with caresses, all in the
incoherence of overpowering delight, full of an absolute faith that the
lost husband had loved her and been pining for her all these years, but
that he had been unable to trace her, and was as happy as she was in
the reunion.

The girl was somewhat bewildered, but she was carried along by this
flood of exceeding joy and gladness. The Marmion and Theseus images
had been dispelled by the reality, and, with Mr. Dutton's sharp reproof
fresh upon her, she felt herself to have been doing a great injustice
to her fathe