o good to be true, though I took care the knot should be tied
faster than my gentleman suspected.'

'Oh, please!' cried Alice deprecatingly, at first not apprehending the
force of the words, having never known the gulf from which Mrs.
Houghton had saved her, and that lady, seeing that the girl was
listening with all her ears, thought of little pitchers and restrained
her reminiscences, asking with real warm interest, 'And how was it?
How did you meet him again?'

'He came and found me out,' said Alice, with satisfaction in her voice.

'Indeed! Not at Dieppe; for he was en garcon when I nearly came across
him ten years ago at Florence.'

'Oh no! He inquired at Dieppe, but they had lost the address my aunt
left.'

'Indeed! I should not have thought it of old Madame Leroux, she seemed
so thoroughly interested in la pauvre petite. What did you do? Your
aunt wrote to me when your troubles were safely over, and she thought
him lost in the poor Ninon, that she meant to settle in a place with an
awfully long Yorkshire name.'

'Micklethwayte; yes, we lived there, and got on very well. We had
boarders, and I had some dear little pupils; but last year Mark
Egremont--you remember dear little Mark--was in the neighbourhood, and
hearing my name, he told his uncle, who had been seeking us ever since.
And he came, Mr. Egremont, and took us home, and oh, the family have
been so kind!'

'What? The parson, and that awful old she-lion of a grandmother, whose
very name scared you out of your wits?'

'She is dead, and so is dear good Lady Adelaide. Canon Egremont is
kindness itself. It was all the old lady's doing, and he knew nothing
about it. He was gone to Madeira with Lady Adelaide and got none of
our letters, and he never knew that his brother was married to me.'

'Trust Alwyn for that,' Mrs. Houghton muttered. 'Well, all's well that
ends well, and I hope he feels due gratitude to me for doing him a good
turn against his will. I tried to get at him at Florence to find out
what he had done with you, but unluckily I was ill, and had to send
through poor Houghton, and he mismanaged it of course, though I
actually wrote down that barbarous address, Mickle something, on a
card. I believe he only got as far as the man instead of the master.'

'Ah! I wanted to ask for Captain Houghton,' said Alice, glad to lead
the conversation away from revelations of which she had an instinctive
dread.

'Gone, my dear! two years a