"I wanted to get you away for a moment, to tell you that it's--all right," said Sidcup, colouring a little and looking just a trifle embarrassed, and yet with a tone of pride in his voice. "Isabel and I have fixed it up. Yes; we were spliced before we left South America. It's all right, old boy! Congratulate me!" Derrick shook his hand until Sidcup winced, and they both laughed like a couple of boys. "Congratulate you! I should think I do!" said Derrick. "I wish you could have heard my wife just now, expressing her admiration for yours. She is more beautiful than ever." "Oh, well," said Sidcup, with a modest pride; "come to that, you've got a beauty too. Tell you what, Green, we're both of us deuced lucky men." "You never spoke a truer word in your life," said Derrick; "and you, at any rate, deserve your luck." They returned to the tent, talking as they went; and there, lo and behold! they found the future Marchioness of Sutcombe the centre of a laughing and talking group, the hearts of all of which she had conquered at first sight. For, consider: she was now a future Marchioness, but not long since she had been Celia Grant, living on a pound a week in Brown's Buildings--as she told them. Derrick tore her away at last, leaving the circus company ignorant of the exalted position of their guests; but, half an hour afterwards, they were astounded beyond words to receive an invitation to dine next night at Thexford Hall; an invitation from Sydney Green and his wife, otherwise, Lord and Lady Heyton. That dinner is marked with a white stone in the history of Derrick and Celia. * * * * * One is reluctant to strike a discordant note, a note of squalid tragedy, in the harmony to which the lives of Celia and Derrick moved; but this record would not be complete without an account of the ending of the man who was known as Lord Heyton. Such an ending as his was inevitable. He died in a drunken brawl in a Chinese doss-house in Manchuria. For months before his death he had been a cause of trouble and anxiety to the authorities of the district; in such a place villainy and roguery have full scope; but poor Heyton never rose to the height of either. Small and petty offences only were those which came within his capacity. For some time he had been connected with a gang of card-sharpers, living under an alias, and depending for his food and drink upon the small wits which Providence had vouchsafed him. It was during a dispute in one of the lowest doss-houses in the place that he met his death. There had been a quarrel, a scuffle, a death-thrust with a knife by a cold-blooded Chinaman, and it was not until the authorities had searched the body, that his identity had been discovered.