"I should be glad to do so for your happiness," replied his uncle, in a tone of earnest affection: "I always loved you, but the last few months have drawn us so much together. There is a tie between us nothing can break."
"Nothing, indeed!" replied Norbourne, taking his uncle's hand.
Both were silent for a few minutes, when Lord Norbourne resumed the conversation.
"But you do not ask me how, when, and where?—have you no curiosity to hear where I met with Miss Churchill?"
Norbourne smiled, and his uncle continued.
"Of all places in the world, at Sir Robert Walpole's villa at Chelsea."
His listener looked astonished, and added, in a whisper,—"You call her Miss Churchill; how is it that you know her by that name rather than her present one?"
"Why, Miss Churchill is her present name; but I forget that you know nothing of her history. That singularly foolish old lady, her grandmother, got up a sort of caricature conspiracy, and Miss Churchill was to have