inside let down one of the glasses, and looked
out.

"Rosamund, it is Sir Everard himself!"

The girl turned quickly round, and exclaimed
in an accent so joyous, that Valentine
cringed and turned cold:

"It cannot be! you are dreaming—yes,
that is surely his voice!"

The stranger was heard speaking outside;
then the bell rang, Rosamund changed colour.

"What must I do, Aunt Carry?" she asked,
moving towards the door and listening.

"I am sure, my dear, I do not know.
Perhaps you had better go and meet him,"
replied the old lady, nervously.

Without any further hesitation, Rosamund
left the room, and did not return. Mary
then signed to Valentine that they had
better go.

"I will not press you to remain now," said
Aunt Carry, "for my dear will be sure to
stay with Sir Everard Maxwell; but you
must visit us again soon. Sir Everard's
arrival is a surprise. We did not look for
him until next month. Good morning."

The Unwins were passing out at the
drawing-room door as Sir Everard entered
the hall. He was a fine-looking gentleman,
middle-aged, a good deal browned by
exposure to sun and weather, and with a
rather stiff military carriage. One sleeve of
his surtout was pinned empty across his
breast, for he had lost an arm.

Mary Unwin, who had a strong spice of
romance in her faded head, thought he would
be the Othello to the fair Desdemona of the
Abbey, and win her heart by stories of
valiant deeds and hair-breadth dangers. But
Rosamund Wilton had been won four years
ago, and Sir Everard Maxwell had come
home to England to marry her that was the
fact of the case. "When he went away Rosamund
was only seventeen, and her father,
who was then living, had declined giving his
consent to her marrying so early, on the plea
that girls of that age cannot know their own
minds; but he promised that if both
continued of the same mind until Rosamund
was of age, he would no longer withhold his
permission.

Sir Everard went out to the East, fought
his way high up in the service, and was
invalided home not long after Rosamund's
father was seized with his last fatal illness
and died. So there were some tears to chasten
the joy of their re-union.

"Who can that gentleman be, Mary?"
Valentine Unwin said to his sister as they
walked away under the arborous shade of the
trees.

"Somebody whom Miss Wilton was very
glad to see," was her reply.

Valentine began to whistle, and broke off
suddenly after half a stave to say: "He looks
like an uncle, or something of that kind, don't
you. think so, Mary?"

"He may be twenty or even twenty-five
years older than she is; but I don't think he
looks like an uncle, Val."

"Then what do you think he is?" rather
sharply.

"A lover, Valentine—I am sure of it."

          TO AND FROM TUNIS.

WHEN the burly captain of the Latteen,
from Genoa to Tunis, viâ Cagliari, assured
us, on embarking at the latter place, that
we should make Tunis in twenty hours, he
probably did not intend to be better than
his word. As it chanced, however, a strong,
steady breeze dead aft, sent him
staggering along; and, without reducing our
engines to half-speed, I doubt if we could
have helped reaching our destination in less
than four hours under the prescribed time.

The Latteen was a jolly old English boat,
with bulwarks like a sloop of war. She had
been on all sorts of stations, under all sorts
of auspices, and was employed during the
Crimean struggle in the painful duty of
transporting the wounded and prisoners. The
storms of the Black Sea had certainly told
upon her frame. She was what sailors call a
very chatty craft. Whether from some
rheumatic affections contracted in her
chequered career, or simply from the garrulity
attendant upon advancing age, her
timbers talked incessantly; and, at one time,
grew so animated as to awaken doubts
whether the debate might not end in a
division.

The Latteen had British engines, and a truly
British engineer—the antitype, be it said, of
him whose inexplicable wrongs have so often
provoked unfeeling laughter on the benches
of the Egyptian Hall. He had stuck to the
Latteen through all her changeful destinies,
for twenty-five years, chuckling with ill-concealed
delight at every piece of evil fortune
that occurred to her or to himself. The man
was bursting with humour. It twinkled in his
little grey eye; it mantled in his swelling
cheek; it spoke in every twitch of his nostril
or eyelid; it expressed itself (less agreeably)
in the half-deferential digs he offered at one's
ribs while narrating the last misadventure
that had happily befallen both. I am positive
old Maundrel was, nevertheless, a creature
of the kindliest nature, and that this cynical
delight in discomfiture was a kind of forced
growth, springing from his limited
opportunities for the indulgence of that keen sense
of humour which was inherent in his
composition.

On the present occasion, his chagrin at our
unexpectedly prosperous run was alleviated
by two consolatory circumstances. In the
first place, the captain had been in a manner
sold; having, in his too cautiously expressed
opinion, absurdly under-estimated the sailing
or steaming properties of his boat. In the
second, "We might—He-he-hee!" chuckled
old Maundrel, "just as well have waited for