"So they will trust you to me again, and that before very long, I hope," were her last words. No letters had reached me on these intervening days; none at least, except one from mother, in which, to my great delight, she said there were good hopes of father's return home late on that same day. "If so," I thought to myself, "I shall soon hear all," and in my heart I know that, though I was by no means devoid of curiosity--curiosity, too, naturally intensified by the events of the last week or two--my deepest feeling was an earnest desire to learn that the victims of a bad man's treachery were now in the way, so far as was still possible, of having the terrible cloud removed from their lives. "That poor Caryll," I said, over and over again. "I can never forget his face as I saw it in my dream." My home-coming was very pleasant. Mother was so delighted to have me with her again, and I to be with her. "It seems all to have been so successful," she said. "Regina Bretton is really a godmother worth having. You are looking so well, and your dress is so pretty." It was one of those chosen for me in London, and I felt pleased at mother's approval. "I am sure you will like all I have got," I said. "Lady Bretton has such good taste, and knows so exactly where to go for everything, and just what to get." There was only one little damper on the satisfaction of my return, and that but a passing one. Father was not expected till very late that night, too late for me to see him. For we were old-fashioned enough in those days to think that a railway journey, of even a few hours' duration, must be tiring, and mother made me go to bed at least an hour sooner than my usual reasonable time. And I fell asleep almost at once. I awoke suddenly. I had, in fact, been awakened, though I did not know it, by the sound of the carriage returning from the station, whither it had gone to fetch father, and the sound of the clock striking twelve fell on my ear a minute or two later. Then, for, as I think I have said, my hearing was very quick, I heard a little bustle in the hall, and the sort of rustle and flutter through the house which tell of an arrival. Then father's voice, and a murmur of welcome which must have been from mother, followed by a quick run up the stairs--father had the agile movements of a much younger man--and the cheery sound of voices down the corridor. _Voices_, whose were they? Father's of course I distinguished at once, but whose was the second? Certainly not our immaculate butler or either of his subordinates, who would never have ventured to laugh in the august presence of their master! But I was too sleepy to trouble myself farther. "One of the boys must have come unexpectedly," I thought as I composed myself again. "Perhaps Dad sent for Jocelyn to help him at Liverpool, after all; he may have needed him."