"Wouldn't be a pleasant alliance, my dear, even if it could come off," continued the Doctor, watching his child furtively. "Ah, dear me! how strangely things do work! Who'd have thought, when we landed in England, that there was the heir to a baron bold waiting to go down on bended knee to my little tyrant, and make her an offer of his heart and hand?" "Oh, papa, how you do delight in teasing me!" "Teasing you? Well, isn't it a fact? You shot him through and through first time we were at church, and your victim has been our humble servant ever since." "But, papa, do you think Thomas could have destroyed the hoarding?" "Well, I don't know, my dear. He was very indignant about it, and said if this was his place he would soon down with the obstruction." "Then it must have been he. You ought to scold him well." "What, for getting rid of a nuisance?" "No: for getting you into such trouble with Lord Pinemount." "Hah!" said the Doctor dreamily; "it's a strange world, Very. Perhaps we had better go back to Iquique." "Oh, papa!" cried the girl in dismay. "Don't you want to go?" "What, leave this lovely place, where it is always green, and the flowers are everywhere, for that dreadful dry desert place where one is parched to death? Ah, no, no, no!" "Humph!" said the Doctor--"always green. Don't seem so, Very: something, to my mind, is getting ripe at a tremendous rate." "I don't know what you mean, dear," said the girl consciously. "Don't you? Ah well, never mind. But you need not be uneasy,--I do not mean to go back: this place will just suit me to write my book, and I'm not going to stir for all the Lord Pinemounts in England." "I wonder how you could ever leave so beautiful a country as England, papa," said Veronica, as the breakfast went on. "You wouldn't wonder, if you knew all," said the Doctor thoughtfully. "All, papa?--all what?" The Doctor was silent, and his child respected his silence. The breakfast was ended, and the paper was thrown down. "I don't see why you should not know, my dear. You are a woman now, and thinking about such things." Veronica looked across at him wonderingly. "You asked me why I left England, or some such question. It was because of the woman I loved, my dear." "Mamma? To join her at Iquique?" "No," said the Doctor thoughtfully; "it was before I knew of her existence." "Ah, papa!" "Yes, my dear. I was desperately in love with a lady before I knew your dear mother." Veronica rose with wondering eyes, and knelt down beside her father, resting her elbows on his knees and gazing up in his face. "Do people--? You loved mamma very dearly, papa?" she whispered. "Very, my child; and we were very happy till it pleased Heaven to take her away. She taught a poor, weak, foolish man what a good woman really is." There was a long pause, and then Veronica said,-- "Do people love more than once, papa?"