Mr. Lyle felt rather vexed that Robert should have blamed little Queenie for her course in regard to Captain Ernscliffe. "The child is too young to be forced into a loveless marriage," he said to himself. "I hope she will marry money some day, for I know how sad the lack of it is, but I hope it may be a love-match, too." The longing for his little girl was very strong upon him one night as he sat in his quiet library trying to interest himself in the daily paper--so strong that he laid the paper down, and rested his head a little wearily on his hands. "It is six months since they went away," he said. "How long it seems, and how much I want to see my little Queenie. It is strange, but ever since she was born I have loved her better than the other children." Something like a quivering sigh sounded faintly through the room. He looked up quickly, but he was quite alone. "I am growing fanciful in my old age and solitude," he thought, and dropped his head again upon his hands. Again that soft, low sigh went trembling through the room. This time some strange instinct drew his eyes to the window, and he sprang to his feet with a smothered cry. A sweet, white face, framed in golden hair, was pressed against the window-pane looking at him, with dark eyes full of love and sorrow--the beautiful face of his absent daughter, Queenie. "She has come home--my darling!" he cried joyfully, and rushed to the window and threw up the sash. But in that moment the lovely young face had disappeared. "Queenie, my love--where are you?" he called. "Do not tease your poor old papa!" But silence and darkness answered him only. He went out into the garden and wandered about in the shrubbery, calling, softly. "Queenie, Queenie!" But echo only answered him. He went back sadly into the house and thought over the perplexing mystery. "She is dead," he said, at last; "I have seen her spirit. She has come to me from far-off foreign lands to bid me an eternal farewell. Oh, Queenie, Queenie, my lost darling!" And from that night Mr. Lyle began to grow old and broken. He could neither eat, nor sleep, nor rest until he heard from his wife again. In a month one of her short, careless epistles came to hand. She said, as usual, that the girls were well and enjoying themselves very much, and added that Georgina had caught a beau, and was apt to make a splendid match. "She is living, then, my little pet!" exclaimed the doting old father, in delighted surprise, "and yet I surely saw her spirit face looking in upon me that night. It was a warning--or a token of sorrow." And the burden of heaviness still clung about his heart, and the shadow brooded in his kindly blue eyes until Mrs. Lyle wrote at last that they were coming home on the _Europa_ the next month. * * * * *