"The little girl lives, and from her heart and
soul forgives!"

He half lifted himself and turned to her. In
her face he read all. The light seemed to play
on the golden hair as on a glory, and a fuller
swell of the organ came sweeping in at the
window, fluttering the honeysuckle-leaves.

L'ENVOI.

We may look back to the personages of this
story some five years later. By that time we
can see the Second Mrs. Tillotson moving in a
world of gentle charities and good works, soft,
melancholy, practical — with excellent means,
too, for her labours; for out of the wreck of
the Foncier much had been recovered, and the
provident care of Mr. Tillotson had secured
her, as the world said. Ross had taken away
with him, as perhaps the reader will have anticipated,
the fruit of a desperate injury, which his
fierce nature and the excitement of that departure
had refused to let him yield to.

The monotony of the sea had set in; he began
to eat his heart out; and only one day after
sailing he was found in the morning dead in his
berth — the ship doctor said, "from a suffusion
of blood on the brain."

It was wonderful how his strange wild spirit
had fought off so long as twenty-four hours the
consequences of such internal injuries; but his
indomitable pride and energy would not let him
"give in," even to sleep. Only that the Great
Enemy stole upon him unawares, he would have
fought his last battle with him, as he had done so
many battles all his life, and have met him standing
up, and defiant. Under all the violence
and ill-conditioned fury which has marked his
nature through the course of this story, the
reader may have seen certain fair impulses overpowered
by stronger untrained impulses. His
"own fellows" heard of his end with regret—
not the worst testimonial to a man's character;
and at the mess such epitaphs as, "Not a bad
fellow," "There are worse in the world,"
"No one's enemy but his own," and "Deuced
good hearted, after all," went round very freely.

His unfortunate end pointed many a moral—
in Mr. Tilney's mouth. Friends that did not
know his good heart so well as those who have
been listening to him so patiently throughout
these pages, might go so far as to say that he
actually enjoyed the fate of his kinsman. He
revelled in the details, which he unfolded again
and again in his club. For the bounty of
his ward now helped him to many more luxuries
besides a club; and in the evening of his
life he was known to come back again to his
older and kindlier view of a late Royal "Dook,"
and of the Court generally. But the example
of Ross was turned to exceeding profit. "My
young friend, ah! I could tell you of a momentous
case out of my own family. As fine a
young man as you ever saw. Made to be about
a Court, but self willed. My dear friend, there's
not a sparrow falls, not a drop leaves the housetop,
without an All-seeing Eye." In this religious
tone of resignation it may be supposed
that he accepted his own lot unrepiningly. For
things at home were grown very uncomfortable,
owing, perhaps, to what one of the Foncier
clerks would have called "a tightness" in the
nuptial market. The securities were offered
freely; but, alas! there were no buyers. A
fretfulness, a repining, a snappishness, had set
in, which rendered the domestic hearth unpleasant
for Mr. Tilney. Most unreasonable treatment:
for he had laboured with the others in
the heats — and the failure was not on his head.

No such trouble clouded the days of The
Captain, with whom the writer is as loth to
part as he was with the original true heart, of
which the character given in these pages is but
a faint sketch. Still can we see him and think
of him in his old faithful round; not growing
dull and insensible, and possibly selfish — which
is but the nature of age — but rather more delicately
sensitive to the wants and feelings of
others. We can look back, and see him, in his
little measured and orderly round of duties,
going forth at the fixed hour, bright and brushed,
and with the shovel-hat all but cocked; or,
busy with his tools, repairing; or, busier still,
in his dressing-gown, with the moderator
drawn close, and the glasses on the high
Roman nose, and the thin lips repeating earnestly,
and with a respect almost devotional,
the words of THADDEUS OF WARSAW; or, better
still, we might sit by him and hear him read
aloud his daily paper, which he would do when
pressed, and which he did with a certain pleasant
laboriousness, setting off the strange facts
which daily papers do sometimes contain with
simple and delightful comment, such as: "See
that, now! Was sentenced to six months'
imprisonment — the creature!—and her child
with her too! That seems hard on her—
now, doesn't it? Egad, Mr. Magistrate, you
went too far that time." Or again: "'Coming
round the corner, the horse slipped, and fell.'
Many's the time that's happened to me. He
should have kept his head well up, and slackened
a little, my dear." Or we can see him standing
up in "the frock," much stooped, for he suffered
more than he ever admitted with what he
called " the leg," but which was the hip properly;
and feeling nervously at the little crimson-silk
purse, the friend that he was always
ready to call on. The image of that genial,
amiable figure I could wish to be the last image
on the reader's mind as he lays down this
volume; and the last words written here shall
be the name of CAPTAIN DIAMOND.

THE END OF "THE SECOND MRS. TILLOTSON."

Now ready, in One Volume, post 8vo,
AUNT MARGARET'S TROUBLE.
London: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, Piccadilly.