“With us.”

“That is fortunate.  She is all I have remaining, by which to prove my identity.”

“As if there could be two such maidens in the world!”

Marguerite left him, a moment, to give Captain Tarbell her address, and returning, they were shortly afterward seated side by side in a coach, Capua and Ursule following in another.  As they stopped at the destined door, Mr. Raleigh alighted and extended his hand.  She lingered a moment ere taking it,—­not to say adieu, nor to offer him cheek or lip again.

“Que je te remercie!” she murmured, lifting her eyes to his. “Que je te trouve bon!” and sprang before him up the steps.

He heard her father meet her in the hall; Ursule had already joined them; he reentered the coach and rolled rapidly beyond recall.

The burning of the Osprey did not concern Mr. Raleigh’s business-relations.  Carrying his papers about him, he had personally lost thereby nothing of consequence.  He refreshed himself, and proceeded at once to the transactions awaiting him.  In a brief time he found that affairs wore a different aspect from that for which he had been instructed, and letters from the house had already arrived, by the overland route, which required mutual reply and delay before he could take further steps; so that Mr. Raleigh found himself with some months of idleness upon his hands, in a land with not a friend.  There lay a little scented billet, among the documents on his table, that had at first escaped his attention; he took it up wonderingly, and broke the seal.  It was from his Cousin Kate, and had been a few days before him.  Mrs. McLean had heard of his expected arrival, it said, and begged him, if he had any time to spare, to spend it with her in his old home by the lake, whither every summer they had resorted to meditate on the virtues of the departed.  There was added, in a different hand, whose delicate and pointed characters seemed singularly familiar,—­

     “Come o’er the stream, Charlie, dear Charlie,
     brave Charlie!

     “Come o’er the stream, Charlie, and dine
     wi’ McLean!”

Mr. Raleigh looked at the matter a few moments; he did not think it best to remain long in the city; he would be glad to know if sight of the old scenes could renew a throb.  He answered his letters, replenished his wardrobe, and took, that same day, the last train for the North.  At noon of the second day thereafter he found Mr. McLean’s coach, with that worthy gentleman in person, awaiting him, and he stepped out, when it paused at the foot of his former garden, with a strange sense of the world as an old story, a twice-told tale, a maze of error.

Mrs. McLean came running down to meet him,—­a face less round and rosy than once, as the need of pink cap-ribbons testified, but smiling and bright as youth.

“The same little Kate,” said Mr. Raleigh, after the first greeting, putting his hands on her shoulders and smiling down at her benevolently.