did it happen?" she crooned, and followed the question with many
more of the same sort; to which he replied as to a mother or a nurse.

"It's this beastly climate," he complained. "It upsets me every
time--though this is the worst bout I've had yet. I really can't stand
it, Debbie. Even in June, when you'd think you were safe--just look at
it!"

It was raining slightly as he spoke.

"Well, why do you try to stand it?" said she. "Why not come back to
your own country? You'd be safe there, if anywhere." "I've been
thinking of it," said he. "It has been in my mind all winter--the
thought of that good, soaking sunshine that we used to have and think
nothing of. The Riviera isn't a patch on it. Aye, I'd get warm there.
But what a life--now. I am not like you--I've got nothing and nobody to
go back to--I should be giving up everything--the little that I have
left. And God knows life is empty enough as it is--"

"Well, I'm going," she broke in. "And am I nobody?"

He sprang up in his chair. "You--YOU going?"

"Time I did," she laughed. "I haven't set eyes on my property and my
two sisters since goodness knows when." He held out his shaking hands.
His face was working pitifully.

"Debbie, Debbie," he wailed, like a lost child, "will you take me? Will
you have me?"

She caught him in her strong arms.

"Dearest, we will go together," she murmured. And he fell, sobbing, on
her breast.

It was not in the least what she had meant to say or to do; but the
appeal was irresistible. It was too terrible to see him--HIM, her young
prince of such towering pride and beauty--brought down to this.

But she soon had him out of his slough of despond, and climbing the
hills of hope again with something of his old gallant air. The rapidity
of his convalescence was astonishing. By the end of July he was well
enough to be married.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The first letter signed "Deborah Dalzell" was addressed, strange to
say, to Guthrie Carey--not to the commander of the SS APHRODITE, via
his shipping office, but to Guthrie Carey, Esq., Wellwood Hall, Norfolk.

For a great change had taken place in the circumstances of her old
friend.

One day, a few years earlier, he had been called from the
sea--somewhere off the coast of South America--to take his place as a
land-owner and land-dweller amongst the great squires of England; quite
the very last thing he could have anticipated in his wildest dreams.
Three sons of the reigning Ca