After a long time he looked up at the girl, blankly at first, and with a grimace of disgust. "You see," he said, and gave a curious laugh--"you see that--that _you_ own all this land of ours--as far as I can make out."
After a long explanation she partly understood, and laughed outright, a clear child's laugh without a trace of that sad undertone he knew so well.
"But we are not going to take it away from your club--are we?" she asked.
"No," he said; "let the club have the land--_your_ land! What do we care? We will never come here again!" He sat a moment, thinking, then sprang up. "We will go to New York to-morrow," he said; "and I'll just step out and say good-bye to Sprowl--I think he and his wife are also going to-morrow; I think they're going to Europe, _to live_! I'm sure they are; and that they will never come back."
And, curiously enough, that is exactly what they did; and they are there yet. And their establishment in the American colony is the headquarters for all nobility in exile, including the chivalrous Orleans.
Which is one sort of justice--the Lansing sort; and, anyway, Coursay survived and married an actress a year later. And the club still remains in undisturbed possession of Eileen Lansing's land; and Major Brent is now its president.
As for Munn, he has permanently retired to Munnville, Maine, where, it is reported, he has cured several worthy and wealthy people by the simple process of prayer.
"Do you desire me to marry him?" asked Miss Castle, quietly.
"Let me finish," said her uncle. "Jane," he added, turning on his sister, "if you could avoid sneezing for a few moments, I should be indebted to you."
Miss Jane Garcide, a sallow lady of forty, who suffered with colds all winter and hay-fever all summer, meekly left the room.
Miss Castle herself leaned on the piano, tearing the pink petals from a half-withered rose, while her guardian, the Hon. John Garcide, finished what he had to say and pulled out his cigar-case with decision.
"I have only to add," he said, "that James J. Crawford is one man in a million."
Her youthful adoration of Garcide had changed within a few years to a sweet-tempered indifference. He was aware of this; he was anxious to learn whether the change had also affected her inherited passion for truthfulness.