'The double villain! He must have intercepted that letter, and utilised the envelope with its postmarks and stamps to deceive me, and effect a breach between us.' 'Thank God you came, dearest Florian!' 'I thought you had renounced me, Dulcie, and now I almost wish you had.' 'Why?' 'It is little use to remember me now--I am so poor and hopeless.' 'After all,' said she, taking his face between her hands caressingly, 'what does poverty matter if we love each other still?' 'And you love me, Dulcie--love me yet!' exclaimed Florian passionately. 'And shall never, never cease to do so.' 'But I am so much beneath you now in position, Dulcie--and--and----' his voice broke. 'What, darling?' 'May never rise.' 'Would I be a true woman if I forsook you because you were unfortunate?' 'No; but you are more than a woman, Dulcie--you are a golden-haired angel!' 'My poor Florian, how gaunt and hollow your cheeks are! You have suffered----' 'Much since last we parted here in dear old Devonshire. But Shafto's villainy surpasses all I could have imagined!' 'And where is Shafto now?' 'With his grand relations, I suppose. I am glad that we have unravelled that which was to me a source of sorrow and dismay--the returned locket. So you cannot take back your heart, Dulcie, nor give me mine?' said Florian. 'Nor would I wish to do so,' she replied, sweetly and simply. 'Though poor, we are all the world to each other now.' 'Hard and matter-of-fact as our every-day existence is, there is--even in these railway times--much of strange and painful romance woven up with many a life; and so it seems to be with mine--with ours, Dulcie.' 'Oh that I were rich, Florian, or that you were so!' exclaimed the girl, as a great pity filled her heart, when she thought of her lover's blighted life, their own baffled hopes, and the humble and most perilous course that was before him in South Africa, where the clouds of war were gathering fast. 'I, too, am poor, Florian--very poor; dear papa died involved, leaving me penniless, and I must cast about to earn my own bread.' 'This is horrible--how shall I endure it?' said he fiercely, while regarding her with a loving but haggard expression in his dark eyes. 'What would you have done if you had not met me by chance here?' 'Loafed about till the last moment, and then done something desperate. I _would_ have seen you, and after that--the Deluge! In two days we embark at Plymouth,' he added, casting a glance at the old church of Revelstoke and its burying-ground. 'There our parents lie, Dulcie--yours at least, and those that I, till lately, thought were mine. There is something very strange and mysterious in this change of relationship and position between Shafto and myself. I cannot understand it. Why was I misled all my life by one who loved me so well? How often have I stood with the Major by a gravestone yonder inscribed with the name of Flora MacIan and heard him repeat while looking at it--