had handed him over to the charge of a bright-eyed Western girl, to whom the whole story had been told, and who showed herself ready and anxious to help in building up again the broken life of her English lover.  To judge from the letters that we have since received, she has shown herself well fitted for the task.  Among other things she has money, and Jack’s worldly affairs have so prospered that George declares that he can well afford now to waste some of his superfluous cash upon farming a few of his elder brother’s acres.  The idea seems to smile upon Jack, and I have every hope this winter of being able to institute an actual comparison between our small boy, his namesake, and his own three-year-old Alan.  The comparison, by the way, will have to be conditional, for Jacket—­the name by which my son and heir is familiarly known—­is but a little more than two.

I turn my eyes for a moment, and they fall upon the northern corner of the East Room, which shows round the edge of the house.  Then the skeleton leaps from the cupboard of my memory; the icy hand which lies ever near my soul grips it suddenly with a chill shudder.  Not for nothing was that wretched woman’s life interwoven with my own, if only for an hour; not for nothing did my spirit harbor a conflict and an agony, which, thank God, are far from its own story.  Though Margaret Mervyn’s dagger failed to pierce my flesh, the wound in my soul may never wholly be healed.  I know that that is so; and yet as I turn to start through the sunshine to the cedar shade and its laughing occupants, I whisper to myself with fervent conviction, “It was worth it.”