uncts of the morrow's
wedding, when I was to be a bridesmaid, and should see my poor little
Dora again. I was alone, for Eustace was sleeping at Therford
Vicarage, but I had not time for sentiment over the old home and old
gardens. I was turning out the old Indian cabinets, which were none of
mine, though they had always been called so, and putting into cotton
wool and paper all my treasures there, ready for transport, when a
shadow fell on me from the open window. I looked up, and there stood
Harold!

Oh, how unlike it was from the way in which we had met three years
before as bewildered strangers! I do not think that sister could ever
have met brother with more entire feeling that home, and trust, and
staff, and stay were come back to her, than when I found Harold's arm
round me, his head bending down to me. I was off my own mind!

When our greeting was over, Harold turned and said, "Here he is."

I saw a fine-looking old man, with a certain majesty of air that one
could not define. He was pale, wrinkled, and had deep furrows of
suffering on cheek and brow, but his dark eyes, under a shaggy white
penthouse, were full of keen fire and even ardour. His bald forehead
was very fine, and his mouth--fully visible, for he was closely
shaven--had an ineffable, melancholy sweetness about it, so that the
wonderful power of leading all with whom he came in contact was no
longer a mystery to me; for, fierce patriot and desperate republican as
he might have been, nothing could destroy the inborn noble, and
instinctively I bent to him with respect as I took his hand in welcome.

After the hasty inquiries, "Where's Dora?" "Where's Eustace?" "Where's
Dermot Tracy?" had been answered, and I had learnt that this last had
gone on to London, where his family were, Harold hurried out to see
about sending for the luggage, and Prometesky, turning to me, almost
took my breath away by saying, "Madam, I revere you. You have done for
the youth so dear to me what I could never have done, and have
transformed him from a noble savage to that far higher being--the
Christian hero."

I did not take this magnificent compliment as if I had been of the
courtly continental blood of him who made it: it made me hot and
sheepish, yet even now I still feel warm at the heart when I remember
it; for I know he really meant it, little as I deserved it, for the
truth was what I faltered out: "It was all in him."

"It was all in him. That is true;