“Oh, yes—­for a long time.  Miriam and Flora were born, and word of their arrival in the world was sent out to him before the final letter for years and years reached them.  In that letter he wrote that he was doing better and better every year, and getting so rich that he didn’t have time to do anything but just stop where he was and ’gather in the shekels.’  There’d be enough for all when he did come, however, and he was altering his will so that in case anything should happen to young Phil—­’which God forbid,’ he wrote—­the girls would come next, and so on to all the heirs of his niece.  After that letter years went by, and never another one.  They, thinking that he had married after all—­for in his last letter he had spoken of a young widow who had lately been engaged to fill the post of housekeeper at his ranch—­gave up all hope when after three times writing no reply came, and finally desisted entirely.  He says, however, that it was just the other way about.  That he did write—­wrote six or seven times—­but could get no reply; and as he afterwards found the housekeeper in question a designing and deceitful person, and shipped her off about her business, he makes no doubt that she received and destroyed Mrs. Comstock’s letter to him and burnt his to her, hoping, no doubt, to inveigle him into marrying her.”

“Quite likely, if she were a designing woman,” commented Cleek.  “But go on, please.  What next?”

“Oh, years of hardship, during which Mr. Comstock died and his widow had to earn their own living unaided.  Young Phil got a post as bookkeeper, Flora taught music and painting, Mrs. Comstock did needlework, and Miriam became a governess in the family of a distant connection of my grandfather, Sir Gilbert Morford.  That’s where and how I met her, Mr. Cleek, and—­Well, that’s another story!” his cheeks reddening and a flash of fire coming into his eyes.  “My grandfather says he will ’chuck me out neck and crop’ if I marry her; but it does not matter—­I will!”

“Yes, you will—­if the cut of that chin stands for anything,” commented Cleek.  “Well, to get on:  the Comstocks were down in the deeps, and no hope of hearing any more from Australia and Uncle Phil, eh?  What next?”

“Why, all of a sudden he dropped in on them, bless his bully old heart!—­and then good-bye to hard times and any more struggling for them.  He’d been in England searching for them for seven months before he found them; but when he did find them there was a time!  Inside of ten hours, the whole world was changed for them.  Made the boys and the girls give up their positions and come home to live with him and their mother, poured money out by the handful, bought Lilac Lodge and fitted it up like a little palace, dressed his niece and her daughters like queens, and settled down with them to what seemed about to be a life of glorious and luxurious ease, and in the midst of all this peace and plenty, brightness and hope, the first blow fell.  Mrs. Comstock,