"You may be mistaken. I should be sorry to believe it. But, even should it be so--listen, Blanche--even should it be so, you will do well to change your tactics. _Try and win him back to you._ I tell it you for the sake of your own happiness." Blanche tossed back her golden curls, and rose. "How old-fashioned you are, Charles! it is of no use talking to you. Will you sing our old duet with me--'I've wandered in dreams'?" "Ay. But I am out of practice." She had taken her place on the music-stool, and was playing the first bars of the song, when a thought struck her, and she turned round. "Charley, such a curious thing happened this morning. I saw in the _Times_ a list of some escaped convicts, who had been on their way to Van Diemen's Land, and amongst them was the name of Thomas Heriot. For a moment it startled and frightened me." Her eyes were upon my face, so was the light. Having a piece of music in my hand, I let it fall, and stooped to pick it up. "Was it not strange, Charles?" "Not particularly so. There may be a hundred Tom Heriots in the world." "That's what Archibald said--or something to the same effect. But, do you know, I cannot get it out of my head. And Tom's not writing to us from India has seemed to me all day more strangely odd than it did before." "India is a regular lazy place. The heat makes people indolent and indifferent." "Yes, I know. Besides, as papa said to me in the few minutes we were talking together before he went away, Tom may have written, and the letters not have reached us. The mail from India is by no means a safe one, he says; letters often get lost by it." "By no means safe: no end of letters are lost continually," I murmured, seconding old Carlen's invention, knowing not what else to say. "Let us go on, Blanche. It is I who begin, I think--'I've wandered in dreams.'" Wandered in dreams! If this misery connected with Tom Heriot were only a dream, and not a reality! END OF VOL. II. BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. _S. & H._ Transcriber's Notes: Inconsistent spelling such as Chantry and Chantrey retained.