"Yes, sir; now that I have my father here to give me his good-night kiss and blessing. Ah! papa dear, I do not know how I could ever live away from you again. I am so glad you no longer have to go sailing away over the ocean, leaving your children behind." "I am glad of it, too," he returned, "but I sometimes fear that the day may come when my dear eldest daughter will want to leave me for a home with someone else." "Indeed, father dear, you need not have the slightest fear of that," she said, laying her head against his breast with a low, happy laugh. "I am sure there isn't in the wide world any other man whom I could love half so well as I do you. I am just as glad to belong to you now as ever I was." "And don't want me to give you away?" "No, no, indeed!" she cried with energy. "Oh, papa! you surely are not thinking of such a thing? You have said, over and over again, that you would not,--at least not for years yet,--even if I wanted you to." "And I say the same now; so don't be wanting me to," he returned in jesting tone, and laying her down upon her pillow as he spoke. "Now go to sleep at once, that you may be ready to rise at your usual early hour and join your father in the morning stroll about the grounds. 'The Lord bless thee and keep thee; the Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee; the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace,'" he added in tender, solemn tones, his hand resting upon her head as he spoke. Then, with a good-night kiss upon her lips, he left her, and contented and happy she speedily passed into the land of dreams. The captain, passing through Grace's room to his own, paused for a moment at her bedside, bent over her, and kissed the sweet lips; but she slept on, unconscious of the caress. He found Violet still awake, repeated to her his little talk with Lucilla, and added, with evident satisfaction, "I feel convinced that, as yet, no one has made any impression upon her heart, that I, her father, still hold the fort there." "Yes; I have hardly a doubt of it," returned Violet; "and it may be many a long day before she is deluded into thinking there is any other man who begins to compare to him; something that I have known for years was not the case," she concluded with a happy laugh. The sun was hardly above the horizon when Lucilla awoke; but she sprang up hastily, with the thought that her father would soon be out in the grounds, and she wanted to be with him. There would be a great deal to attend to in preparation for their expected guests, and perhaps she could be of some assistance; at all events she would like to see all that was going on, and give her opinion on any doubtful subject.