“Miss Landor!  By the way, has she been asked to come over, for the tenth?”

“I don’t know.  You ought to ask her yourself.  Why did not you propose to her, Maurice?  Or perhaps you did?”

“If I did not, you may thank Bailey.  Yes, indeed, Lucia, you contrived so well to persuade me you never would care for me that I began to imagine it was best I should marry her; that is, supposing she would have me.”

“And all the while I was doing nothing but think of you, and of how wicked and ungrateful and all sorts of bad things I had been in Paris.”

“And I—­” etc. etc.

The rest of their conversation that morning was much like it was on other days, and certainly not worth repeating.  Lucia, however, took the first opportunity of speaking to Lady Dighton about Miss Landor, and seeing that her invitation for the wedding was not neglected.

The tenth of July, Lucia’s birthday and her marriage-day, came quickly to end these pleasant weeks of courtship.  It was glorious weather—­never bride in our English climate had more sunshine on her—­and the whole county rung with the report of her wonderful beauty, and of the romantic story of these two young people, who had suddenly appeared from the unknown regions of Canada, and taken such a prominent and brilliant place in the neighbourhood.

But they troubled themselves little just then, either with their own marvellous fortunes or with the gossip of their neighbours.  Out of the quaint old church where generations of Dightons had been married and buried, they came together, man and wife; and went away into “that new world which is the old,” to fulfil, as they best might, the dream to which one of them had been so faithful.  They went away in a great clamour of bells and voices, and left Mrs. Costello alone, to comfort herself with the thought that the changes and troubles of the past had but served to redeem its errors, and to bring her, at last, the fuller and more perfect realization of her heart’s desire.

  THE END.

  PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND CO.,
  LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.