She is right this time. A fly is driving away, and the gentleman who has alighted from it stands waiting for admittance. A man with a thin face, clean-cut features, and light hair, dressed entirely in black and with a deep mourning band round his hat. He started violently at the sight of the child, but recovered himself with an effort. 'You are little Bell?' he said, putting out his hand. 'Yes,' she replied, sliding her little fingers into his, and looking up fearlessly into his face. 'I am little Bell, and you are Mr. Gurwood. I know you! Papa and mamma have been expecting you, O, ever so long.' The child pulled him gently towards the house, and he had scarcely crossed the threshold when he was seized in Humphrey Statham's hearty grasp. 'Martin, my dear old friend--at last. We thought you would never come, we have waited for you so long.' 'So Bell tells me,' said Martin, returning his friend's pressure; 'but you see here I am. You're not looking a bit changed, Humphrey! And your wife?' 'Alice! Here she is to answer for herself.' Yes, she was there, more lovely than ever, Martin thought, in the mellowed rounded beauty of her form, and with the innocent trusting expression in her eyes still unchanged. Let us, unseen by them, stand by the two old friends as they sit that evening over their wine, in the broad bay-window looking towards the sunset, and from their conversation glean our final records. 'And you are very happy, Humphrey?' asked Martin. 'Happy!' cried Humphrey Statham; 'my dear Martin, I never knew what happiness was before. I rather think,' he continued, with a smile, 'that laziness may have something to do with it. You see, Alice doesn't care much about my being absent for the whole of the day, as I should necessarily be if I attended strictly to business; and as, living as we do, I do not spend anything like my income, I have knocked off City work to a certain extent, and leave the business in Mr. Collins's charge. He sees how matters are tending, and has made overtures to buy it, and shortly I shall let him have it to himself, I suppose. Not that my life is wholly objectless; there's the garden to look after, and Bell's education to superintend, and Alice to be read to; and then at night I potter away at a book on Maritime Law, which I am compiling, so that I find the twenty-four hours almost too short for what I have to do.' 'And Alice?' 'I think that I may say she is perfectly happy. I have not a thought which she does not share, not a wish which is not inspired by her.' 'And little Bell? What a charming child she has grown to be! To go back, Humphrey, for the first and only time to that conversation which we had in your chambers, I may say that circumstanced as I am in regard to that child, I was delighted to notice the fancy she seemed to take to me to-day.' 'Curiously enough she has had from the first mention of your name an odd interest about you, and has frequently asked when you were coming to see us.'