"And you forgive me everything, do you, Howard?" she questioned, gravely. "You know that I have sinned very grievously. I have almost periled my soul in my mad rage for an unholy revenge."
"May God forgive you as freely as I do, my darling," he answered, fondly.
When they strolled into the drawing-room arm-in-arm, a little later, Mrs. Egerton rose from her arm-chair, rustling more than ever in her happy self-importance.
"My dear Xenie," she simpered, "let me be the first to congratulate you that your husband's missing will is found at last."
For answer, Xenie drew her to the window.
"Aunt Egerton, I forgot your bunch of roses," she said, "but I want you to look down there in that graveled walk."
She pointed to the tiny fragments of paper, and Mrs. Egerton's face grew pale.
"It is St. John's will," Xenie answered steadily, yet crimsoning painfully beneath her aunt's curious glance.
"And you have destroyed it," Mrs. Egerton exclaimed. "Were you mad, child?"
Xenie looked at her aunt with a gesture of proud humility.
"No," she answered, "I have been mad, but, thank God I have come to my senses at last. I destroyed the will because I had wronged Howard enough already without taking his inheritance from him. I have confessed my faults to him and he has forgiven everything."
"And the long vendetta is over," said Mrs. Egerton. "Henceforth you will be----" she paused for a suitable word.
"Xenie will be my wife," said Howard Templeton, drawing near.
Mrs. Carroll, who had been silent all this while, drew near and took her daughter for one moment into the tender clasp of her maternal arms.
"God bless you, my daughter," she murmured. "You have known deep sorrow--may your future years be very happy ones."
My readers, we close our story as we began it--with a wedding. But this time the wedding bells indeed are "golden bells," ringing out the mellow chimes of true happiness.
For this is not the union of winter and summer, this is not the sordid barter of youth and beauty for an old man's gold. It is that one true and beautiful union upon earth where the solemn vow of marriage welds eternally together
"Two souls with but a single thought, Two hearts that beat as one."
This novel was originally serialized in the _New York Family Story Paper_; this electronic edition is derived from the later hardcover reprint in the _Columbus Series_, in which it shared a volume with _Wild Margaret_ by "Geraldine Fleming" (actually Charles Garvice).