“And to think how near she was to me while I was breaking my heart over her loss!” thought the happy lover. He wondered if Floy would be glad to see him again, and his heart throbbed a happy response. He had the greatest confidence in his darling’s truth. “Lady Florence is in her own parlor,” said the servant whom Lord Miller asked for his daughter. Lady Florence! How strange that sounded to Alva and St. George! Yet it was her rightful title now. Little Floy was never to know again the ills of poverty and loneliness. All that she had sighed for in other days was hers now--love, wealth, position. Lucky little mortal! She had been amusing herself all day trying on her new dresses and jewels, but after all they did not fill her tender little heart. There was an ache there all the time because of her grief for her fickle lover. “I wish that he could see me now. This gown is so becoming,” she thought, artlessly, rejoicing in the possession of the cool white robe so soft and billowy in its fine laces and streaming ribbons. At that moment three people were at the door, and Lord Miller opened it without knocking. “Oh, let us wait outside!” cried Alva, with a romantic impulse, drawing back as St. George crossed the threshold. Neither do we want to make a third at the reunion of the long parted lovers, reader, so we will wait outside with the other couple, for we can guess at all that passed. Haven’t we all been there ourselves? Ah! happy love! Is it not a foretaste of Paradise? Lord Miller found that he had recovered his lovely child only to lose her again. St. George was the most persistent lover in the world. He pleaded continually for an early marriage. “Floy is nothing but a child, barely seventeen. Wait till her eighteenth birthday,” answered the fond father. The lover was most unhappy over the year’s probation. “I can not bear to lose sight of my darling again. I give you warning I shall follow you to England when you take her away--ay, to the world’s end!” he protested. Lord Miller answered, laughingly: “I shall extend you a cordial invitation to be our guest at our English home for as long as you please,” and with that the lover had to be content, for even his own parents, though they loved Floy so dearly, took part against him. “It is right that her father should have her for a time,” they said; and Floy, who adored her noble parent, was well satisfied to have it so. She knew quite well, the saucy little darling, that St. George would seldom be absent from her side in that year of waiting. They would not sail for their ancestral home until October, anyway, for they had much to do in America. For one thing, Lord Miller had to seek out his wife’s neglected grave, and place a fitting monument above the gentle heart that his father’s wickedness had driven wild with despair. The thought of all she had suffered would haunt Lord Miller with keen despair as long as he lived.