There was nothing to prevent an early marriage. It was settled that Captain and Mrs. Holland should retain the house, which indeed they could well afford to do, and that Dick and Annie should reside there whenever they were in town, but that, as a rule, they would live at the estate her father had purchased, near Plymouth. Their means were ample, for during the eight years he was in the Service, Dick's 12,000 pounds had, as his father had predicted, doubled itself; and Annie's fortune was at least as large as his own. Dick had good reason to bless, to the end of his life, his mother's plan; that had resulted in the double satisfaction of restoring his father to her, and in winning for himself the woman whom he ever regarded as the dearest and best wife in the world.