Ah me! a split sixpence is of small value, yet here it was riches, for it embodied the hopes, the future, and was all the world to two young and loving hearts!
"Amid the pestilent swamps and mangrove creeks of West Africa, where, from September to June, the steamy malaria rises like smoke in the sunshine, baleful," said Morley, "and laden with disease and death, O Ethel, my thoughts were with you! There, while engaged in the stupid and monotonous task of daily bartering old muskets, nails, and buttons, powder, rum, and tobacco, for palm-oil, camwood, ivory, lion-skins, and gorgeous feathers, bartering, cajoling, and often browbeating the hideous and barbarous savages of Eboe and Biafra, for our house in Liverpool, the hope of being reunited to you alone sustained and inspired me. In my wretched hut, built of stakes, roofed with palm-leaves, and plastered with mud, or on board the river craft, where we always sleep at some seasons, and during the horrors of the fever which left me the wreck of myself, it was your memory alone that shed light and hope around me. And there was one terrible night, when the breathless air was still and heavy, and when a green slime covered all the ripples of the rotten sea, while my pulse was as fleet as lightning, and my brain was burning, and when I thought that certainly I must soon die, my old friend Bartelot—you have often heard me speak of Tom Bartelot, of Liverpool—conveyed me to his brig, which rode at her moorings inside Foche Point, and he actually cured me, merely by talking for hours of you, Ethel, and of our meeting again—cured me, when, perhaps, the doctor's doses failed. And now, Ethel, poor though I am, broken in spirit, and crushed in hope—this hour, this moment, and these kisses, dearest, reward me for all, all—toil, danger, suffering, and hoping against hope itself!"
As he spoke he pressed Ethel Basset again to his breast in a long and passionate embrace, and a bright, happy, and lovely smile spread over the face of the young girl.
CHAPTER II.
LAUREL LODGE.
To a certain extent the conversation in the preceding chapter must have served to inform the reader of the relative positions and prospects of those whom, without much preamble, we have introduced—to wit, the hero and heroine of our story.
Morley Ashton was the only son of a once wealthy merchant, whose failure and death had left him well-nigh penniless, to push his fortune in the world as he best could. Thus, as agent of a Liverpool house, he had been, as he stated, broiling for the last three years on the western coast of Africa, with what success the reader has learned from his conversation with Ethel Basset, to whom he had now been engaged for four years.
Ethel was now somewhere about her twentieth year, and though her face was not, perhaps, of that kind which is termed strictly beautiful, it would be difficult to say wherein a defect could be traced.
Her features were regular, and, though somewhat pensive in expression, her occasionally sparkling and piquant smile relieved them from that insipidity which frequently is the characteristic of a perfectly regular face.
Though, in addition to singing, riding, and waltzing to perfection, she could play rather a good stroke at billiards, and make a good shot at the archery butts, her manner was gentle and graceful, her mind intelligent, and she improved on acquaintance, for few could converse with Ethel Basset for half-an-hour without being somehow convinced that she was lovely.