"Did you not tell me, Rowland," said she, "to wait for your return, and you would then talk to me of love? I knew your motive for going away; and admired you for it. I firmly confided in what you told me. All the time of your absence, I believed you would come back to me; and I should have waited for many years longer. Ah! Rowland, I could never have loved another." My journey to Liverpool--to ascertain the name and address of the man Lenore had _not_ married--I had hitherto kept a secret, but a letter had arrived the evening before, which frustrated my designs. Mrs Lanson had written to her old friend, Mrs Nowell--giving a full account of my visit that had ended so abruptly. I was compelled to listen to a little pleasant raillery from Captain Nowell, who did not fail to banter me about the trouble I had taken, to learn what I might have discovered much sooner and easier--by simply keeping faith with him, in the promise I had made to call upon him. "I told you aboard the ship," said he, "that I had something to show you worth looking at; and that you couldn't do better than visit me, before throwing yourself away elsewhere. See what it has cost you, neglecting to listen to my request. Now, is it not wonderful, that the plan I had arranged for your happiness, when we were seven thousand miles from this place, should be the very one that fate herself had in store for you?" I agreed with Captain Nowell, that there was something very strange in the whole thing; and something more agreeable than strange. I returned home highly elated with the prospect of my future happiness. I informed my brother and his wife of a change in my intentions--merely telling them that I had given up the design of returning to Australia. They were much gratified at this bit of news, for they had both used every argument to dissuade me from going back to the colonies. "What has caused this sudden, and I must say sensible, abandonment of your former plans?" asked my brother. "I have at last found one," I answered, "that I intend making my wife." "Ah!" exclaimed William, "the one that you had lost?" "Yes, the one that I had lost; but what makes you think there was such an one?" "Oh! that was easily seen. Ever since meeting you on the Victoria diggings, I noticed about you the appearance of a man who had lost something--the mother of his children, for instance. I have never asked many particulars of your past life; but, until within the last few days, you looked very like a man who had no other hope, than that of being able to die sometime. Why, Rowland, you look at this minute, ten years younger, than you did three days ago!" I could believe this: for the change that had taken place in my soul was like passing from night to day. I was, indeed, happy, supremely happy: since Lenore had promised to be mine. That day I did not think of poor Jessie, until after my return home, when Mrs Nagger, while setting my tea before me, put the question: