"No," she whispered, as she clasped her hands, and laid them on his shoulder, "it is not too late. Mine was but a girlish love for one unworthy of a thought, and in my youthful weakness I thought that all the world was base. I did not know. Take me, Neil, husband, as your faithful wife. It is not too late. We will go there hand in hand, side by side, to fight this pestilence." "What? Take you there--you?" he cried, as he raised his head, and caught her hands--"take you to face that awful scourge?" "Yes," she cried, raising her head proudly, "side by side with you in the awful strife. God with us, Neil--our faith in his protecting shield, as I place mine in you, my brave, true hero--my love--my life." "Till death do us part," cried Neil, as he clasped her to his breast. "Amen!" said a solemn voice, and Sir Denton came forward out of the darkness, and stopped by their side. "I thought I was going to the grave a childless man," he continued in a broken voice--"my son--my daughter. You have given me afresh lease of life--to live till I see you once again. I say it, children, I, the old prophet: I shall see you before I die." CHAPTER THIRTY TWO. PEACE AT HIGHTOFT. Neil Elthorne had not been a month at the West Coast settlement before he began to find that the funds placed at his disposal by the home authorities would be utterly inadequate for the great work on hand. He was already crippled, and upon taking the sharer of his enterprise into his confidence he fully realised for the first time that he had married a wealthy wife, and that the accumulations of years of her large income were waiting to be utilised as he thought best. This gave the necessary impulse to his task, and for the next five years the warfare was carried on. With wonderful success? Yes. To achieve all that he and Lady Cicely desired? No. But they fought on, unscathed by disease, which swept away its hundreds, leading, as it were, a charmed life, till reason forced it upon his busy brain that the time had come when he must return. He had done far more than the most sanguine had expected, and thousands lived to bless his name, and that of the brave, true woman ever working at his side. His departure was sudden. Weakness and a strange languor had attacked his wife. She had hidden her sufferings from him lest she should hinder him in his work, but his practiced eye detected her state; and as soon as the necessary arrangements could be made, the low, miasmatic tropical shore was left behind, and in a vessel rapidly making its way north, the change was almost magical. "So well, dear," said Lady Cicely one bright morning, as the vessel rushed onward into purer air, and beneath brighter skies, "that I feel as if we ought to return."