Lilias and Mr Ross are really very satisfactory, and considering that she is thirty (thirty! Isn't it appalling!), he is not a bit too old. It's nice to see her look happy and satisfied, and she has been as sweet as sugar ever since, and as pleased as possible with furnishing her little house, which will be quite poky and shabby compared with yours, or Maud's, or even Elsie's sanatorium. Poor old Lil! I'm glad she's going to have a good time, at last. I'm afraid she has felt very "out of it" the last few years. Old Mr Vanburgh is longing for your next visit, and has his study simply plastered over with portraits of the boy. I go to sit with him on wet afternoons, and listen meekly to praises of yourself, which I know to be absolutely undeserved. By the way--is Betty in love? Never a word could I get out of her, but her indifference to the admiration she got down here--and she got a good deal--was quite phenomenal, unless there is something behind! Methinks at times I trace a melancholy in her eye. Adieu, my love; this epistle ought to make up for past delinquencies.--Yours ever, Christabel. CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. MILES' RETURN. It was six years after his departure from home when Miles Trevor sailed again for his native land. There had been some talk of his return during the previous winter, and bitter indeed had been the disappointment when it was again postponed, and postponed on account of that ubiquitous person "my chum Gerard." The prospecting expedition of Will Gerard and his partner had at last been blessed with success;--if reports could be believed, with extraordinary success, for the opinion of the experts who had visited the claim predicted for it an even greater future than the Aladdin itself. Between the partners in the venture a sufficient sum had been raised to enable the mine to be "proved" by several shafts and cross-cuts, and the analyses of samples produced were so abundantly satisfactory, that there could be no difficulty in obtaining all the money necessary to thoroughly develop the mine. Miles was intensely interested in his chum's prospects, which to a certain extent were coincident with his own, for, according to promise, he had been allowed to buy a share in the land, which, small as it was, might turn out a more profitable investment than engineering. It was decided that while one partner stayed on the spot, Miles should fit in his holiday so as to be able to help Gerard with the work of floating a company in England, an arrangement which it was believed would necessitate but a short delay. As is invariably the case in these affairs, however, matters took much longer to set in train than had been originally expected, and it was a good six months later before the welcome cablegram was received stating that the travellers were really on their way.