y discovery to Beckenham, pointing out the man and
warning him to watch for him when he was abroad without me. This he
promised to do.

Next morning I donned my best attire (my luggage having safely arrived),
and shortly before eleven o'clock bade Beckenham good-bye and betook
myself to Potts Point to call upon the Wetherells.

It would be impossible for me to say with what varied emotions I trod
that well-remembered street, crossed the garden, and approached the
ponderous front door, which somehow had always seemed to me so typical
of Mr. Wetherell himself. The same butler who had opened the door to me
on the previous occasion opened it now, and when I asked if Miss
Wetherell were at home, he gravely answered, "Yes, sir," and invited me
to enter.

I was shown into the drawing-room--a large double chamber beautifully
furnished and possessing an elegantly painted ceiling--while the butler
went in search of his mistress. A few moments later I heard a light
footstep outside, a hand was placed upon the handle of the door, and
before I could have counted ten, Phyllis--my Phyllis!--was in the room
and in my arms! Over the next five minutes, gentle reader, we will draw
a curtain with your kind permission. If you have ever met your
sweetheart after an absence of several months, you will readily
understand why!

When we had become rational again I led her to a sofa, and, seating
myself beside her, asked if her father had in any way relented. At this
she looked very unhappy, and for a moment I thought was going to burst
into tears.

"Why! What is the matter, Phyllis, my darling?" I cried in sincere
alarm. "What is troubling you?"

"Oh, I am so unhappy," she replied. "Dick, there is a gentleman in
Sydney now to whom papa has taken an enormous fancy, and he is exerting
all his influence over me to induce me to marry him."

"The deuce he is, and pray who may----" but I got no farther in my
inquiries, for at that moment I caught the sound of a footstep in the
hall, and next moment Mr. Wetherell opened the door. He remained for a
brief period looking from one to the other of us without speaking, then
he advanced, saying, "Mr. Hatteras, please be so good as to tell me when
this persecution will cease? Am I not even to be free of you in my own
house. Flesh and blood won't stand it, I tell you, sir--won't stand it!
You pursued my daughter to England in a most ungentlemanly fashion, and
now you have followed her out here again."