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.