“Then you are John Musgrave?” cried the young man. “Oh, sir, I am glad--most glad, that you have come home! Yes, I think she likes me; and child or woman,” cried young Geoff, clasping the little hand close with a sudden _effusion_, “I shall never care for any one else.” Serious, careworn, in peril of his life, John Musgrave laughed softly in his beard. “This is my first welcome home,” he said. Geoff found a carriage waiting for him at Stanton. His first impulse having been to take the children to his mother, he gave them up now with a pang, having first witnessed the surprise of incredulous delight with which Lilias flung herself at her waking upon her father. The cry with which she hailed him, the illumination of her face, and, Geoff felt, her utter forgetfulness of his own claims, half-vexed the young man after his uncomfortable night; and it was with a certain pang that he gave the children up to their natural guardian. “Papa, this is Mr. Geoff,” Lilias said; “no one has ever been so kind; and he knows about you something that nobody else knows.” John Musgrave looked up with a gleam of surprise and a faint suffusion of colour on his serious face. “Every one here knows about _me_,” he said, with a sigh; and then he turned to the young guardian of his children, “Lily’s introduction is of the slightest,” he said. “I don’t know you, nor how you have been made to take so much interest in them--how you knew even that they wanted help: but I am grateful to you with all my heart, all the same.” “I am Geoffrey Stanton,” said the young man. He did not know how to make the announcement, but coloured high with consciousness of the pain that must be associated with his name. But it was best, he felt, to make the revelation at once. “The brother of Walter Stanton, whom----. As Lilias says, sir, I know more about you than others know. I have heard everything.” John Musgrave shook his head. “Everything! till death steps in to one or another of the people concerned, that is what no one will ever know; but so long as you do not shrink from me, Lord Stanton---- You are Lord Stanton; is it not so?” “I am not making any idle brag,” said Geoff. “I know _everything_. It was Bampfylde himself--Dick Bampfylde himself--who sent me after the children. I know the truth of it all, and I am ready to stand by you, sir, whenever and howsoever you want me----” Geoff bent forward eagerly, holding out his hand, with a flush of earnestness and enthusiasm on his young face. Musgrave looked at him with great and serious surprise. His face darkened and lighted up, and he started slightly at the name of Bampfylde. At last, with a moment’s hesitation, he took Geoff’s outstretched hand, and pressed it warmly. “I dare not ask what it is you do know,” he said, “but there is nothing on my hand to keep me from taking yours; and thank you a thousand times--thank you for _them_. About everything else we can talk hereafter.”