Captain M--- did not receive the immediate benefit which he had anticipated from a return to his native land. Bath, Cheltenham, Devonshire, and other places were recommended one after the other by the physicians, until he was tired of moving from place to place. It was nearly two years before he felt his health sufficiently re-established to resume the command of the _Aspasia_, during which period the patience of officers was nearly exhausted; and not only was all the furniture and fitting up of the cottage complete but Captain Capperbar had provided himself with a considerable stock of materials for repairs and alterations. At last a letter from the captain to Macallan gave the welcome intelligence that he was to be down at Portsmouth in a few days, and that the ship was ordered to fit for foreign service. We must not omit to mention here, that during these two years Seymour had been able to procure frequent leave of absence, which was invariably passed at the McElvinas; and that the terms of intimacy on which he was received at the hall and his constant intercourse with Emily, produced an effect which a more careful mother would have guarded against. The youth of eighteen and the girl of sixteen had feelings very different from those which had actuated them on their first acquaintance; and Seymour, who was staying at the McElvinas when the expected arrival of Captain M--- was announced, now felt what pain it would be to part with Emily. The intelligence was communicated in a letter from Prose, when he was sitting alone with McElvina, and the bare idea of separation struck him to the heart. McElvina, who had often expressed his opinion on the subject to his wife, had been anxious that our hero should be sent on a foreign station, before he had allowed a passion to take so deep a root in his heart that, to eradicate it, would be a task of great effort and greater pain. Aware, from the flushed face of Seymour, of what was passing within, he quietly introduced the subject, by observing that in all probability, his favourite, Emily, would be married previous to his return--pointing out that an heiress of so large a property would have a right to expect to unite herself with one in the highest rank of society.