Then the Reverend Arthur rose from his seat and moved towards the door, motioning to them not to follow him as he went out into the garden, and they saw him from the window go up and down the walks, as if communing with all his familiar friends, asking, as it were, their counsel in his time of trial. At last he came slowly back into the room, where the elderly lovers had been seated in silence, neither daring to break the spell that was upon them, feeling as they did how their future depended upon the brother's words. They looked at him wonderingly as he came into the room pale and agitated, as if suffering from the reaction of a mental struggle; but there was a smile of great sweetness upon his lips as he said, softly: "Harry, old friend, I never had a brother. You will be really brother to me now." "No, no!" cried his sister, excitedly. "You shall not sacrifice yourself like this!" "Hush, dear Mary," he replied calmly; "let me disabuse your mind. You confessed to me your love for Harry Bolter here. Why should I stand in the way of your happiness?" "Because it would half kill you to be left alone." "But I shall not be left alone," he cried, excitedly. "I shall bitterly regret parting from this dear old home; but I am not so old that I could not make another in a foreign land." "Oh! Henry Bolter," protested the little lady, "it must not be!" "But it must," said her brother, taking her in his arms, and kissing her tenderly. "There are other reasons, Mary, why I should like to go. I need not explain what those reasons are; but I tell you honestly that I should like to see this distant land." "Where natural history runs mad, Arthur," cried the doctor, excitedly. "Hurrah!" "Oh, Arthur!" cried his sister, "you cannot mean it. It is to please me." "And myself," he said, quietly. "There; I am in sober earnest, and I tell you that no greater pleasure could be mine than to see you two one." "At the cost of your misery, Arthur." "To the giving of endless pleasure to your husband and my brother," said the Reverend Arthur, smiling; and before she could thoroughly realise the fact, little quiet Miss Mary Rosebury was sobbing on the doctor's breast. VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER THIRTEEN. ON THE VOYAGE.