Mr. Leigh dropped his eyes slowly from his son’s face, and put his hand confusedly to his head.

“What was it?” he said.  “I can’t remember.”

“Only two or three words.  Just that all she could say did not alter the case, or alter me.”

This was rather a free rendering of the original message, but it was near enough and significant enough for Mr. Leigh to be quite sure he had never heard such words before.  They would have given him just that key to his son’s heart which he had longed for.

“You must be mistaken,” he answered.  “I never received such a message as that.”

“It was a postscript.  I had meant to write to her and had not time.”

“You must have forgotten.  You meant to send it.”

“I sent it, I am certain.  Have you my letters?”

“Yes.  They are in that drawer.”

Maurice opened the drawer where all his letters had been lovingly arranged in order.  He remembered the look of the one he wanted and picked it out instantly.

“There it is, sir,” he said, and held out to his father those two important lines, still unread.  Mr. Leigh looked at the paper and then at Maurice.

“I never saw it,” he replied.  “How could I have missed it?”

“Heaven knows!  It is plain enough.  And my note, which came in the letter before that; it was never answered. That may have miscarried too?”

“There was no note, Maurice, my dear boy; there was no note.  I wondered there was not.”

“And yet I wrote one.”

Maurice was looking at his father in grievous perplexity and vexation, when he suddenly became aware of the nervous tremor the old man was in.  He went up to him hastily, with a quick impulse of shame and tenderness.

“Forgive me, father,” he said.  “I forgot myself and you.  Only you cannot know the miserable anxiety I have been in lately.  Now tell me whether it is true that you are stronger than when I left?”

He sat down by the easy-chair and tried to talk to his father as if Mrs. Costello and Lucia had no existence; but Mr. Leigh, though he outwardly took courage to enjoy all the gladness of their union, was troubled at heart.  It was a grievous disappointment, this coming home of which so much had been said and thought.  No one could have guessed that the young man had been out into the world to seek his fortune, and had come back laden with gold, or that the older had just won back again the very light of his eyes.

Anxious as Maurice had been to avoid notice at the moment of his arrival at Cacouna, he had been seen and recognized on the wharf, and the news of his coming carried to Mr. Bellairs before he had been an hour at home.  So it happened that while the father and son sat together in the afternoon, and were already discussing the first arrangements for their return to England, a sleigh drove briskly up to the door, and Mr. and Mrs. Bellairs came in full of welcomes and congratulations.