"Your news does not surprise me, Harry. I have had a feeling all along that you knew something, but were keeping it from me. You spoke so very seldom of them, and when you did it seemed to me that what you said was not spoken in your natural voice. I felt sure that had you known nothing you would have often talked to us of meeting them in London, and of the happiness it would be. I would not ask, because I was sure you had a good reason for not telling us; but I was quite sure that there was something." "I thought it better to keep it from you, Jeanne, until the danger was all over. In the first place you had need of all your courage and strength; in the next place it was possible that you might never reach England, and in that case you would never have suffered the pain of knowing anything about it." "How thoughtful you are, Harry!" Jeanne murmured. "Oh how much we owe you! But oh how strange and lonely we seem--everyone gone except Marie, and we may never see her again!" "You will see her again, never fear," Harry said confidently. "And you will not feel lonely long, for I can promise you that before you have been long at my mother's place you will feel like one of the family." "Yes; but I shall not be one of the family," Jeanne said. "Not yet, Jeanne. But mother will look upon you as her daughter directly I tell her that you have promised to become so in reality some day." Harry's reception, when with the two girls he drove up in a hackney coach to the house at Cheyne Walk, was overwhelming, and the two French girls were at first almost bewildered by the rush of boys and girls who tore down the steps and threw themselves upon Harry's neck. "You will stifle me between you all," Harry said, after he had responded to the embraces. "Where are father and mother?" "Father is out, and mother is in the garden. No, there she is"--as Mrs. Sandwith, pale and agitated, appeared at the door, having hurried in when one of the young ones had shouted out from a back window: "Harry has come!" "Oh, my boy, we had given you up," she sobbed as Harry rushed into her arms. "I am worth a great many dead men yet, mother. But now let me introduce to you Mesdemoiselles Jeanne and Virginie de St. Caux, of whom I have written to you so often. They are orphans, mother, and I have promised them that you and father will fill the place of their parents." "That will we willingly," Mrs. Sandwith said, turning to the girls and kissing them with motherly kindness. "Come in, my dears, and welcome home for the sake of my dear boy, and for that of your parents who were so kind to him. Never mind all these wild young people," she added, as the boys and girls pressed round to shake hands with the new-comers. "You will get accustomed to their way presently. Do you speak in English?" "Enough to understand," Jeanne said; "but not enough to speak much. Thank you, madame, for receiving us so kindly, for we are all alone in the world."