"No, dear. I am just as dissatisfied with the relationship you propose as I was three years ago, and it must be either cousin or--" and she stopped. She was standing up beside him, now. "Or wife," he said, taking up her hand. "Is it possible you mean wife?" Her face was a sufficient answer, and he drew her down to him. "You silly boy!" she said, five minutes afterwards. "Of course, I thought of it all along. I never made any secret of it to your father. I told him that our escape was like a fairy tale, and that it must have the same ending: 'and they married, and lived happy ever after.' He would never have let me have my way with the house, had I not confided in him. He said that I could spend my money as I pleased, on myself, but that not one penny should be laid out on his house; and I was obliged to tell him. "I am afraid I blushed furiously, as I did so, but I had to say: "'Don't you see, Uncle?'--of course, I always called him uncle, from the first, though he is only a cousin--'I have quite made up my mind that it will be my house, some day; and the money may just as well be laid out on it now, to make it comfortable; instead of waiting till that time comes.'" "What did my father say?" "Oh, he said all sorts of nonsense, just the sort of thing that you Irishmen always do say! That he had hoped, perhaps, it might be so, from the moment he got your letter; and that the moment he saw me he felt sure that it would be so, for it must be, if you had any eyes in your head." When Major O'Connor came home he was greatly pleased, but he took the news as a matter of course. "Faith," he said, "I would have disinherited the boy, if he had been such a fool as not to appreciate you, Mary." O'Grady was loud in his congratulations. "It is just like your luck, Terence," he said. "Luck is everything. Here am I, a battered hero, who has lost an arm and a foot in the service of me country, and divil a girl has thrown herself upon me neck. Here are you, a mere gossoon, fifteen years my junior in the service, mentioned a score of times in despatches, promoted over my head; and now you have won one of the prettiest creatures in Ireland and, what is a good deal more to the point, though you may not think of it at present, with a handsome fortune of her own. In faith, there is no understanding the ways of Providence." A week afterwards the whole party went up to Dublin, as Terence and O'Grady had to go before a medical board. A fortnight later a notice appeared, in the Gazette, that Lieutenant Colonel Terence O'Connor had retired from the service, on half pay, with the rank of colonel.