“I wrote to Mr. Nowell at an address in Brussels which I found at the top of his last letter to his wife.  No answer came.  I wrote again, after a little while, with the same result; and, in the mean time, the child had grown fonder of me and dearer to me every day.  I had hired a nursemaid for her, and had taken an upper room for her nursery; but she spent the greater part of her life with me, and I began to fancy that Providence intended I should keep her with me for the rest of her days.  She told me, in her innocent childish way, that papa had never loved her as her mamma did.  He had been always out of doors till very, very late at night.  She had crept from her little bed sometimes when it was morning, quite light, and had found mamma in the sitting-room, with no fire, and the candles all burnt out, waiting for papa to come home.

“I put an advertisement, addressed to Mr. Percival Nowell, in the Times and in Galignani, for I felt that the child’s future might depend upon her father’s acknowledgment of her in the present; but no reply came to these advertisements, and I settled in my own mind that this Nowell was a scoundrel, who had deliberately deserted his wife and child.

“The possessions of the poor creature who was gone were of no great value.  There were some rather handsome clothes and a small collection of jewelry—­some of it modern, the rest curious and old-fashioned.  These latter articles I kept religiously, believing them to be family relics.  The clothes and the modern trinkets I caused to be sold, and the small sum realised for them barely paid the expense of the funeral and grave.  The arrears of rent and all other arrears fell upon me.  I paid them, and then left Brighton with the child and nurse.  I was born not twenty miles from this place, and I had a fancy for ending my days in my native county; so I came down to this part of the world, and looked about me a little, living in farm-house lodgings here and there, until I found this cottage to let one day, and decided upon settling at Lidford.  And now you know the whole story of Marian’s adoption, Mr. Fenton.  How happy we have been together, or what she has been to me since that time, I could never tell you.”

“The story does you credit, sir; and I honour you for your goodness,” said Gilbert Fenton.

“Goodness, pshaw!” cried the Captain, impetuously; “it has been a mere matter of self-indulgence on my part.  The child made herself necessary to me from the very first.  I was a solitary man, a confirmed bachelor, with every prospect of becoming a hard, selfish old fogey.  Marian Nowell has been the sunshine of my life!”

“You never made any farther discoveries about Mr. Nowell?”

“Never.  I have sometimes thought, that I ought to have made some stronger efforts to place myself in communication with him.  I have thought this, especially when brooding upon the uncertainties of my darling’s future.  From the little Mrs. Nowell told me about her marriage, I had reason to believe her husband’s father must have been a rich man.  He might have softened towards his grandchild, in spite of his disapproval of the marriage.  I sometimes think I ought to have sought out the grandfather.  But, you see, it would have been uncommonly difficult to set about this, in my complete ignorance as to who or what he was.”