d and considered or
resented and destroyed?

I did not know. I could not guess. And then I was going down into the
deep Antarctic night, where no sound from the living world could reach
me.

What would happen before I could get back? Only God could say.

M.C.

SECOND PART

MY MARRIAGE

TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

Notwithstanding my father's anxiety to leave Rome we travelled slowly
and it was a week before we reached Ellan. By that time my depression
had disappeared, and I was quivering with mingled curiosity and fear at
the thought of meeting the man who was to be my husband.

My father, for reasons of his own, was equally excited, and as we sailed
into the bay at Blackwater he pointed out the developments which had
been made under his direction--the hotels, theatres, dancing palaces and
boarding houses that lined the sea-front, and the electric railways that
ran up to the tops of the mountains.

"See that?" he cried. "I told them I could make this old island hum."

On a great stone pier that stood deep into the bay, a crowd of people
were waiting for the arrival of the steamer.

"That's nothing," said my father. "Nothing to what you see at the height
of the season."

As soon as we had drawn up alongside the pier, and before the passengers
had landed, four gentlemen came aboard, and my heart thumped with the
thought that my intended husband would be one of them; but he was not,
and the first words spoken to my father were--

"His lordship's apologies, sir. He has an engagement to-day, but hopes
to see you at your own house to-morrow morning."

I recognised the speaker as the guardian (grown greyer and even less
prepossessing) who had crossed with the young Lord Raa when he was going
up to Oxford; and his companions were a smooth-faced man with searching
eyes who was introduced as his lordship's solicitor from London, a Mr.
Curphy, whom I knew to be my father's advocate, and my dear old Father
Dan.

I was surprised to find Father Dan a smaller man than I had thought him,
very plain and provincial, a little country parish priest, but he had
the tender smile I always remembered, and the sweet Irish roll of the
vowels that I could never forget.

"God bless you," he said. "How well you're looking! And how like your
mother, Lord rest her soul! I knew the Blessed Virgin would take care of
you, and she has, she has."

Three conveyances were waiting for us--a grand brougham for the Bishop,
a big