"Queenie, it was not your fault nor mine. Surely you will not doom me to wretchedness for such a scruple as that. You made every sacrifice she asked of you while living, and she would not wish you to immolate our mutual happiness upon her tomb, now that she is dead." Her own heart seconded his pleading so fully that she could not say him nay. "I had meant to fulfill my resolve to retire into a convent for life," she said, "but I cannot keep down my heart's rebellious throbs. I will go with you, my husband." So it chanced that two weeks later the strangely-reunited husband and wife stood on the deck of a steamer just leaving her moorings for America, and as Queenie turned away from her last look at old England's fading shore, she saw a gentleman hastening toward her--a gentleman so like her poor, dead father, that her heart leaped into her throat. "Uncle Rob!" she cried, springing forward with her hands extended. "My little niece, Queenie!" he exclaimed, taking the two little hands warmly into his own. "This is my Uncle Robert Lyle," she said, presenting him to her husband. "You see, Lawrence, _he_ does not disown me!" The old gentleman looked down fondly into her sweet face. "Oh! how could they disown you?" he exclaimed. "You have changed but little since I saw you last, and that change has only made you more lovely. I should have known you anywhere, though it is five years since I saw you last. I have heard your sad story, my dear, and I do not doubt its truth for an instant. I would have hastened to you at once, but I was ill and unable to travel." She flashed a look of silent gratitude upon him from her dusky eyes. "And by the way," he said, "I owe you a scolding, little Queenie, for your failure to come abroad with your mother and sisters four years ago. It was a great disappointment to me when they came without you. I did not enjoy the year we traveled together half so well as I should if my little pet had been with us." Queenie stood silent, growing white and red by turn. Captain Ernscliffe stared from one to the other in blank astonishment. "Surely, Mr. Lyle, I have misunderstood your meaning," he said, "Queenie certainly went to Europe that year with her mother and sisters!" CHAPTER XXXIV. For a moment there was a blank silence. Robert Lyle stared silently at his niece's husband as though he doubted his sanity, and after a pause Captain Ernscliffe gravely repeated his words: "Surely I have misunderstood your meaning sir. Queenie certainly went to Europe that year with her mother and sisters." "If she did I was certainly not aware of the fact," Mr. Lyle answered dryly, for he felt just a little nettled at the other's persistent contradiction. Captain Ernscliffe looked around at his wife. He started and uttered a cry of alarm as he did so.