“Look here, I can’t stand it any longer,” he cried. “Mother--is living then, and all right?” He seized her by the shoulders, looked her in the face, kissed her almost roughly, brushing his beard along her smooth cheek. “I knew you the first moment,” he said, “you little thing! I knew you the first moment. You were always a clever baby from your cradle. I have often thought the last baby was like you. You were the sharpest little thing! Of course I knew nobody else could be Liddy Joscelyn. And you thought I belonged to old Isaac, eh? that is the best joke I ever heard. Old Isaac--is the old fellow living? And father--stood out for me? Well he ought to, for it is along of him----” Here Harry stopped a minute, put Lydia away, and looked round him upon the two silent spectators who regarded this scene with an astonishment beyond words. He made a pause, pulling himself up all at once. “Poor old father,” he said, “after all he’s done more for me than anyone (I called the boy after him, you can tell him). It is along of him--that I found the best friend and the dearest wife that ever was.” And Harry gathered his Rita--who had been standing by with a countenance swept by all manner of emotions: now angry, now melting, wondering, bewildered, indignant, always chill with that sense of being left out, which is the most terrible of sensations to such as she--into his arms and kissed her, and put his hand over her forehead as if clearing some veil away. “You are not Mrs. Oliver any longer,” he cried; “that’s a good thing over. You’re Rita Joscelyn, and the best and the sweetest that ever did honour to the name. Isn’t she a little beauty, Liddy? What will mother say to her, and to the children?” Here poor Harry, overmastered by excitement and pleasure, fairly burst out crying, and kissed his wife over and over, sobbing, and bedewed her hair with his tears. “You might let her speak to me, Harry,” said Lydia, crying a little in sympathy, but brightening and beaming too. “This is all very astonishing,” said Mr. Bonamy. “You have talked a great deal in an unknown tongue, and kissing is all very well, Harry; but you owe a fuller explanation to me.” Then Lydia stepped forth. “We are the Joscelyns of Joscelyn Tower--the real old Joscelyns whom everybody knows in the Fell country,” she said. “We are not quite so rich as we once were (but father has been doing so well lately,” she added, in a parenthesis to Harry) “and we live in the White House. _He_ ran away ten years ago, and never has written, never has sent a word (oh, shame, Harry! and poor mother breaking her heart) all this time. But when I left home in November,” Liddy said, holding her head high, “to come abroad, I told them I should find him, I should bring Harry home; nobody believed me of course, but I have done it; and now, Mr. Bonamy, you know why I said I loved you. We are relations,” she said, holding out her hand; “we all belong to the same family now.”