'See,' shrieked Virginia again, 'they are coming, they are coming. Do not you see them?'
Paul looked, and there sure enough, were two figures, a male and a female, advancing slowly towards them, across the moonlit sand.
'It is nothing,' cried Paul; 'it cannot possibly be anything. I protest, in the name of science, that it is an optical delusion.'
Suddenly the female figure exclaimed, 'Thank God, it is he!'
In another moment the male figure exclaimed, 'Thank God, it is she!'
'My husband!' gasped Virginia.
'My wife!' replied the bishop, for it was none other than he. 'Welcome to Chasuble Island. By the blessing of God it is on your own home you have been wrecked, and you have been living in the very house that I had intended to prepare for you. Providentially, too, Professor Darnley's wife has called here, in her search for her husband, who has overstayed his time. See, my love, my dove, my beauty, here is the monkey I promised you as a pet, which broke loose a few days ago, and which I was in the act of looking for when your joint cries attracted us, and we found you.'
A yell of delight here broke from the Professor. The eyes of the others were turned on him, and he was seen embracing wildly a monkey which the bishop led by a chain. 'The missing link! he exclaimed, 'the missing link!'
'Nonsense!' cried the sharp tones of a lady with a green gown and grey corkscrew curls. 'It is nothing but a monkey that the good bishop has been trying to tame for his wife. Don't you see her name engraved on the collar?'
The shrill accents acted like a charm upon Paul. He sprang away from the creature that he had been just caressing. He gazed for a moment on Virginia's lovely form, her exquisite toilette, and her melting eyes. Then he turned wildly to the green gown and the grey corkscrew curls. Sorrow and superstition, he felt, were again invading Humanity. 'Alas!' he exclaimed at last, 'I do now indeed believe in hell.'