"If you are not a happy woman, child, it will be your own fault," her father said. "I consider you a marvellously lucky girl." "As if I did not know that!" she replied, laughing through her tears. Mr. Atherton did not sail quite so soon as he had intended. A church had recently been erected at the central settlement, and a clergyman established there, and a month after matters were settled between him and Marion their wedding was celebrated, almost every settler on the Mohaka being present. The newly-married couple returned to The Glade for a week, Mr. and Mrs. Renshaw and Wilfrid remaining as the guests of Mr. Mitford. At the end of that time they returned, and with Mr. and Mrs. Renshaw sailed for Napier, where they took ship for England. "What would you have done if I had sailed away for England without ever mustering up courage to speak to you, Marion?" Mr. Atherton said as he stood by the bulwark with her that evening taking their last look at New Zealand. "I should not have let you go, sir," his wife said saucily; "didn't I know that you cared for me, and had I not refused all sorts of offers for your sake? I don't know what I should have done, or what I should have said, but I am quite sure I should not have let you go unless I found that I had been making a mistake all along. It would have been ridiculous indeed to have sacrificed the happiness of two lives merely because you had some absurd ideas about your age." "I never thought you cared for me, Marion, never." "That is because you never took the trouble to find out," his wife retorted. "Men are foolish creatures sometimes, even the wisest of them." Marion Atherton's life was one of almost perfect happiness. Mr. Atherton entirely gave up his wanderings abroad, and by dint of devotion to racquets and tennis in summer, and of hunting and shooting in winter, he kept down his tendency towards corpulence. He was an energetic magistrate, and one of the most popular men in the county. Mr. Renshaw resumed his former studies in archæology, but they were now the amusement instead of being the object of his life, and he made an excellent agent to his son-in-law. Standing in the relation he did to Mr. and Mrs. Atherton, he and Mrs. Renshaw shared in their popularity, and occupied a good position in the county.