Page:Guy Boothby--A Bid for Fortune.djvu/191

Rh ! was in the room and in my arms! Over the next five minutes, gentle reader, we will draw a curtain with your kind permission. If you have ever met your sweetheart after an absence of several months you will readily understand why!

When we became rational again I led Phyllis to a sofa, and, seating myself beside her, asked if her father had in any way relented towards me. At this she looked very unhappy, and for a moment I thought was going to burst into tears.

"Why! What is the matter, Phyllis, my darling!" I cried in sincere alarm. "What is troubling you?"

"Oh, I am so unhappy," she replied. "Dick, there is a gentleman in Sydney now to whom papa has taken an enormous fancy, and he is exerting all his influence over me to induce me to marry him."

"The deuce he is, and pray who may" but I got no farther in my inquiries, for at that moment I caught the sound of a footstep in the hall, and next moment Mr. Wetherell opened the door. He remained for a brief period in the doorway, looking from one to the other of us without speaking, then he advanced, saying, "Mr. Hatteras, be so good as to tell me when this persecution will cease? Am I not even to be free from you in my own house? Flesh and blood won't stand it, I tell you, sir, won't stand it! You pursued my daughter to England in a most ungentlemanly fashion, and now you have followed her out here again."

"Just as I shall continue to follow her all my life, Mr. Wetherell," I replied, warmly, "wherever you may take her. I told you on board the Orizaba, months ago, that I loved her; well I love her ten thousand times more now. She loves me—won't you hear her tell you