"Oh, how plainly still I can draw their faces and forms, as my mind goes back quickly and feverishly at times over the past days of infancy, when their kind eyes smiled on me under our old roof. How different seems that early home and parental care, which to a child are as a fortress and tower of strength, when compared to----" "Our diggings in manhood, eh?" interrupted Hawkshaw, who had joined them unperceived, and thus cut short Morley's intended peroration. The latter repressed his rising wrath with difficulty. Jealousy of Hawkshaw, perhaps, he had not; but that Ethel should be annoyed by the society of such a man was repugnant to him. But how was he to act? He could not quarrel with Hawkshaw while they both shared, for a brief period now, the hospitality of Mr. Basset; and to retire from Laurel Lodge would but serve to leave him in full possession of the field, and to embitter the last few days they would all spend together in good old England, and in the home of their early loves and best associations. With Morley, Ethel and Rose had paid a visit for the last time to all their old haunts and rambles. At Acton Chase, now almost in the full foliage of an early summer; at Acton Chine, that frightful cliff which overhangs the sea; at the moss-grown Norman cross; on Cherrywood Hill, where in childhood they had often sought in vain, among the long grass and the pink bells of the foxglove, for the elves and fairies of whom they had read so much in nursery lore. They paid a last visit to the ivy-clad cottages of all their old pensioners and favourites in the village, to each and all of whom they gave some little memento; to the churchyard stile; to every place connected with the memory of their past happiness; and, lastly, to their mother's grave the sisters paid a visit that was sad and solemn. Some daisies which grew there Ethel gathered and placed in her breast, and with something of the same spirit which often inspires the poor expatriated Highland emigrant, she made up a little packet of English earth to take with her to her new home beyond the sea. She sadly viewed their garden, where a blush of summer roses, of crimson daisies, gorgeous lilacs, and sweetbriar had now replaced the earlier flowers of spring, the yellow pansies, the purple auriculas, the golden crocuses, the pale white snowdrop, and she wondered if such things grew in the distant Isle of France. It was on her return alone from a farewell visit in the village, that she was overtaken by Hawkshaw, when something like an unpleasant crisis took place in the relations which had subsequently existed between them. At that time Morley was absent, having walked to the Acton railway station, for the purpose of telegraphing along the London and North-Western line, to the agents of the _Hermione_, for intelligence regarding his berth and passage. CHAPTER VII. THE REJECTION.