“Clubs! Clubs!” screamed Hepsy, catching him round the neck. “Where have you been?” Oliver did not answer, but sat watching Richard, who was gazing at his father with an expression upon his face something like what it wore when first he recognized his daughter. Every eye in the room was turned toward him, but none scanned his features so curiously as did the old Judge. “Who is it, Bobum?” he whispered, while his cheek turned pale. “Who is it standing there, and what makes him stare so at me?” But Bobum could not tell, and he was about to question the stranger, when Richard advanced toward his father, and laying a hand on either shoulder, looked wistfully into the old man’s eyes; then pointing to his own portrait hanging just beyond, he said: “Have I changed so greatly that there is no resemblance between us?” “Oh, heaven! it’s Richard!—it’s Richard! Bobum, do you hear? ’Tis my boy! ’Tis Dick come back to me again!” The Judge could say no more, but sank upon the sofa faint with surprise, and tenderly supported by his son. Half beside herself with fear, Geraldine came forward, demanding haughtily: “Who are you, sir, and why are you here!” “I am Richard Howell, madame, and have come to expose your villanous plot,” was the stranger’s low-spoken answer, and Geraldine cowered back into the farthest corner, while the Judge, rallying a little, said mournfully: “You told me, Dick, of lonesome years when I should wish I hadn’t said those bitter things to you, and after you were gone I was lonesome, oh, so lonesome, till I took little Mildred. _Richard_,” and the old man sprang to his feet electrified, as it were, with the wild hope which had burst upon him, “_Richard_, WHO IS MILDRED?” “_My own daughter, father. Mine and Hetty Kirby’s_,” was the answer deliberately spoken, while Richard cast a withering glance at the corner, where Geraldine still sat, overwhelmed with guilt and shame, for she knew now that exposure was inevitable. With a sudden, hateful impulse, she muttered: “An unlawful child, hey. A fit wife, truly, for Lawrence Thornton.” The words caught Judge Howell’s ear, and springing like lightning across the floor, he exclaimed: “Now, by the Lord, Geraldine Veille, if you hint such a thing again, I’ll shake you into shoe-strings,” and, by way of demonstration, he seized the guilty woman’s shoulder and shook her lustily. “Mildred had as good a right to be born as you, for Dick was married to Hetty. I always knew that,” and he tottered back to the sofa, just as Edith, frightened at finding herself in a strange place, began to cry. Stepping into the hall for a moment, Richard soon returned, bringing her in his arms, and advancing toward the Judge, he said: “I’ve brought you another grandchild, father,—one born of an English mother. Is there room in your heart for little Edith?” The eyes, which looked wonderingly at the Judge, were very much like Mildred’s, and they touched a chord at once.