'That is a secret. Mr. Dering refuses to tell me. I wish I knew.'

'I wouldn't wish if I were you. Gratitude is at all times a burden and a worry. Besides, he might be a vulgar person without aspirates or aspirations. Much better not inquire after him. Thirteen thousand pounds at three and a half per cent. means four hundred and fifty pounds a year. A nice little addition to your income. I congratulate you, Elsie; and this evening we will drink the health of the unassuming benefactor; the retiring and nameless recogniser of maidenly worth. Bless him!'

'And now, Athelstan, begin your adventures. Tell me everything: from the day you left us till now. You cannot tell me too much or talk too long. Before you begin, ask any questions about my mother and Hilda that you want to ask. Then we can go on undisturbed.'

'I have no questions to ask about either. I have already ascertained from George that both are in good health, and that Hilda has married a man with an immense fortune. That is happiness enough for her, I hope.—Now, Elsie, I shall be tedious, I am afraid; but you shall hear everything.'

He began. It was such a narrative as thousands of young Englishmen have been able to tell during the last five-and-twenty years. The story of the young man with a few pounds in his pocket, no friends, no recommendations, and no trade. Athelstan landed at New York in this condition. He looked about for employment and found none. He hastened out of the crowded city: he went West, and got work in the business open to every sharp and clever man—that of journalism. He worked for one paper after another, getting gradually more and more West, until he found himself in San Francisco, where he was taken on by a great paper, which had now sent him over here as its London correspondent. That was all the story; but there were so many episodes in it, so many adventures, so many men whom he remembered, so many anecdotes cropping up, in this eight years' history of a man with an eye, a brain, and a memory, that it was long past luncheon-time when Athelstan stopped and said that he must carry on the next chapter at another time.

'That pile of dollars that you made over the silver mine, Athelstan—what became of them?'

'What became of them? Well, you see, Elsie, in some parts of the United States money vanishes as fast as it is made. All these dollars dropped into a deep hole of the earth, and were hopelessly lost.'

She laughed. 'You will tell me some day—when you please—how you lost that fortune. Oh! what a thing it is to be a man and to have all these adventures!—Now, Athelstan, consider—if it had not been for your bad fortune, you would never have had all this good fortune.'

'True. Yet the bad fortune came in such an ugly shape. There has been a black side to my history. How was I to tell people why I left my own country? I could make no friends. At the first appearance of friendship, I had to become cold, lest they should ask me where I came from and why I left home.'

Elsie was silent.