“Ask me not to join the world again,” said Grahame, hoarsely; “in all else, the duties of my children shall be as laws, but that”—­

“Well, well, we will not urge it now, my dear sir,” replied the young sailor, cheerfully; then added, with the eager agitation of affection, “But Lilla, my Lilla.  Oh, may I hope that she will in truth be mine?  Oh, have I, can I have been too presumptuous in the thought I have not loved in vain?”

“Away with you, and seek the answer from her own lips,” said Mr. Grahame, with more of his former manner than he had yet evinced, for he now entertained not one doubt as to Edward being the chosen one on whom his daughter’s young affections had been so firmly fixed.  “Go to her, my boy; she will not fly a second time, so like a startled hare, from your approach; tell her, had she told her father Edward Fortescue was the worthy object of her love, he would not thus have thrown a damp upon her young heart, he would not have condemned him as being incapable of loving her for herself alone.  Tell her, too, the name of Philip Clapperton shall offend her no more.  Away with you, my boy.”

Edward awaited not a second bidding.  In a very few minutes the whole garden had been searched, and Miss Grahame inquired for all over the house, then he bounded through the lane, and scarcely five minutes after he had quitted Mr. Grahame, he stood by the side of Lilla; the consciousness that she had confessed her love, that he might have overheard it, was still paramount in her modest bosom, and she would have avoided him, but quickly was her design prevented.  Rapidly, almost incoherently, was the conversation of the last half hour repeated, and with all the eloquence of his enthusiastic nature, Edward pleaded his cause, and, need it be said, not in vain.  Lilla neither wished nor sought to conceal her feelings, and long, long did those two young and animated beings remain in sweet and heartfelt commune beside that lowly grave.

“What place so fitted where to pledge our troth, my Lilla, as by my mother’s resting-place?” said Edward.  “Would that she could look upon us now and smile her blessing.”

Happily indeed flew those evening hours unheeded by the young lovers.  Grahame, on the entrance of his happy child, folded her to his bosom; his blessing descended on her head, mingled with tears, which sprung at once from a father’s love and self-reproach at all the suffering his irritability had occasioned her.  And that evening Lilla indeed felt that all her sorrows, all her struggles, all her dutiful forbearance, were rewarded.  Not only was her long-cherished love returned, not only did she feel that in a few short months she should be her Edward’s own, that he, the brave, the gallant, honoured sailor, had chosen her in preference to any of those fairer and nobler maidens with whom he had so often associated, but her father, her dear father, was more like himself than he had been since her mother’s death.  He looked, he spoke the Montrose Grahame we have known him in former years.  Edward had ever been a favourite with him, but he and Lilla had been so intimate from their earliest childhood, that he had never thought of him as a son; and when the truth was known, so truly did Grahame rejoice, that the bitterness in his earthly cup was well-nigh drowned by its present sweetness.