"I am staying at No. 4, Comberemere Gardens. If you will call any morning, I will see you. That will do, I suppose?"

And she was about to pass on.

“No, my lady, it won't do. I'm just home from San Fr'isco, and I want to know what you've done with-"

"At your peril!" cried Lady Moynehan, with a warning gesture.

"Oh, you can't buy me off, my lady, any longer. I'm well enough to do now."

"But I can order you off, and I can call the police. Colonel Gaynor will

you—”

It was not to be supposed that this curious interview had been unobserved. Already a crowd had gathered round; persons the best bred are sometimes inquisitive. More than one ear was alert, anxious to catch a word; for all knew Lady Moynehan, who was one of the grandees at Beachbourne. But Gaynor was equal to the occasion. Before Millicent, who was some distance behind, with the child, could come up, or the stranger expostulate, he was walked off: the colonel had him by the arm, and was quietly talking to him as to an old friend.

Come, come, my dear sir; this was no

time to intrude, you know.

ladyship to-morrow."

You can see her

"I'll make her pay for this. I will not be humbugged any longer.

Where are you

taking me to?" asked the stranger, abruptly.

"My lodgings."

"Any lush and cigars ?"

"Plenty, if you'll only keep quiet."

"Suppose I said I would not go another yard with you? You can't make me. And who are you?" he added to Gaynor; "a relation ?"

"Want to be, perhaps? I twig. Don't do it. You'll be tired of it precious quick."

"Why, what do you mean ?"

"Aha, old cock! that's my secret."

sinking to rest, disappearing with modest, unconscious air, as the souls of good men leave the world, unseen, almost unappreciated, but for that one tender ray that tells of a long career of worth.

All were alike anxious to get to their journey's end. The shivering ayahs, with their fiendish charges, jabbering in outlandish accents; the bronzed, bearded ́men, swearing at the raw air; the sickly mothers; the pale invalids; the seamen, worked off their legs in "the Bay"; the captain in dread lest a Channel fog should catch him before he makes the Needles; and Alured Frere, with the rest, paces the deck with impatient air, pausing again and again to ask any officer of the ship he may meet,—

Shall we do it, do you think?"

"Most likely, colonel; unless it comes on thick."

This time he is talking to the mail-master. "How about trains to get on to town?" "There is always a special to meet me and my bags."

"Will you give me a seat?"

"By all means.

people may detain you."

But the custom-house

"Why? I've nothing to declare."

"No; but when we get in late at night, they don't come aboard till the morning; and they won't look at your heavy boxes for hours and hours."

Two

"Bless you, I've no heavy boxes. years' campaigning hasn't left me much. I might be a new-born babe."

"Lieutenant-Colonel Alured Frere, V.C., C.B.," was the inscription our hero might have written now upon his boxes; and such highsounding title might have acted as a talisman to the officers of Her Majesty's Customs. But without any such self-advertisement, he managed to get his one portmanteau through the inspection in time to join the mail-master at the station, and take his seat in the single van that formed the "mail-special." Two hours afterwards he was at his hotel in Jermyn Street.

The haste which our hero displayed in reaching London had a deeper reason than the mere delight in being once more at home. He was glad, of course, to feel that his exile

CHAPTER XII.

RETURN, CROWNED.

"See the conquering hero comes,
Sound the trumpet, beat the drums."

Alexander the Great (stage edition).

Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

THE P. and O. steamer that was nearing Southampton at the end of a dull day in the early spring, was laden with its customary freight passengers, varied in aspect and in tongue, but agreeing in one respect,-in their anxiety to get to land. Among them was the Indian official, sapless, colourless, hardened by constant exposure to a tropical climate, till he seemed like a sun-dried brick or a piece of withered wood. There was the Indian also, with liver enlarged, temper and constitution alike deranged. Then there was a "bigwig"