"Stupid boy!" again emphasized the lady, "whom did you come here to see?"
Quickly glancing at the beautiful, radiant, still-smiling face of the young girl, and then at the impressive features of the elder lady, Weldon Gardner, with bated breath and a dazed expression in his startled eyes, exclaimed:
"Exactly so. Doctor Gardner--Evelina Dent Howard--at your service!"
As she spoke, she placed her hand in his, and asked, in the liquid tones whose cadences he so well remembered, "Have you been punished enough for your unknightly scorn of the girl you condemned without trial?"
"Oh, forgive!" he pleaded, drawing her to a seat beside him. "I see it all now. What a dolt you must have thought me! How could you ever have tolerated me?"
"There is the conspirator," archly said Evelyn, pointing to Mrs. Duke. "She it was who enabled me to deceive you. I wrote to her immediately upon leaving your house for my cousin's, in Brooklyn, and she at once devised the scheme that I have found so hard to carry out. Meanwhile, she never lost sight of you."
It was long before the necessary explanations were exhausted, and when the new day dawned no happier man proudly entered upon his duties than did Weldon Gardner.
It is upon a soft September afternoon that we last see Dr. Gardner and his lovely wife. Within a snug little arbor beside the lake in Central Park the two sit side by side, watching the idly-floating pleasure crafts, and noting the lazy ripples of the green wavelets. Their hearts grow tender with a mighty love that finds no language in which to clothe itself.
Every blessing of life is theirs; every cadence that affection knows makes harmony in their words. Gayly-dressed children pass by, some with toy balloons, bounding into air. Evelyn shuddered at even this tiny reminder of her reckless adventure, and clinging to her husband's arm, blesses him and the day that confided her to his keeping. Accident had tested his noble nature as the ordinary course of events never could have done; and now was fulfilled the last wish of his parents, that in Evelyn Howard should Weldon Gardner find the glory of heaven's last, best gift to man.
"Walk right in, Mr. Lightus, do," said the cheery voice of the Widow Partridge, as the portly figure of Mr. Hezekiah Lighthouse appeared in her hospitable doorway.