I am to return home—home to Glen Ora in the Fairy Bell, the yacht of Sir Horace, and we are to be married in due time after our arrival; for the worthy baronet, after mature consideration, was pleased to reiterate his consent, without apparently caring a jot about what that bugbear 'the world,' would say.
The old M.P. had met this personage—'the world,' in Parliament, and in the borough for which he is Member; he had met him at Almack's; at Crockford's; at Véry's; at the Opera; at Meurice's in Paris, and he marvelled in secret what this awful inquisitor, whose whereabouts is so dangerously vague, would say to the fact of his only daughter and heiress not becoming the wife of any of the blasé Honourables or sporting Peers to whom gossip had alternately assigned her; but simply plain Mrs. Allan Mac Innon, the wife of a hero, with only Her Majesty's 6s. 6d. per diem.
He took another glass of Moselle; pondered a little, and thought it was all for the best.
And so think I! With Laura for my bride, I would not envy Alexander of all the Russias on his throne.
The hearths of the people shall again be lit in Glen Ora; from the wilds of the Far West I will call the survivors home; and there, at least, the image of God shall no longer give place to grouse and deer—to sheep and dogs!
Reality never equalled anticipation, say casuists and moralists; but those fellows seldom smell gunpowder, and moreover never saw, never loved or were beloved by such a girl as Laura Everingham.
THE END
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.