Derval read these strange fragments between him and the light again and again, till he fairly committed them to memory. He could not make out the mystery, or why she should be writing about him in any way. He quite failed to understand it, nor could he exactly speak of it; but he had good reason to remember it when several degrees of latitude lay between him and Finglecombe. He felt that his visit there had been a mistake; that his father was all but alienated from him by a step-mother who wickedly hated him; that his step-brother was a greedy, sullen, and most unlikeable youth. Thus, more than ever, was his loving heart thrust back upon itself. Why was all this? What had he done beyond the crime of being the eldest son of his father, that his own flesh and blood should treat him thus? He had but one unalloyed satisfaction during his visit. He received the Albert Medal for saving the life of Lord Oakhampton's daughter, and as he looked on it, his heart reverted again to the bright little maid in that isle of "Vexed Bermoothes," and he wished that the _Amethyst_ had been bound for that region again, instead of Van Dieman's Land, or Tasmania as we name it now. So the hour of his departure came, and with heedlessness and mortification curiously mingling in his heart, he once more quitted his home, on the very day preceding one which Mrs. Hampton had fixed for a brilliant dinner-party, and when she knew that Derval must, without fail, be on board his ship. London: Printed by W. H. Allen & Co., 13, Waterloo Place, S.W.