last moments.  Yet time does all things wonderful and in the course of not many months there remained of Goddard’s memory only a great sense of relief that he was no longer alive.  Mary Goddard, indeed, was very ill for a long time; and but for Mrs. Ambrose’s tender care of her, might have followed her husband within a few weeks of his death.  But the good lady never left her, until she was herself again—­absolutely herself, saving that as time passed and her deep wounds healed her sorrows were forgotten, and she seemed to bloom out into a second youth.

So it came to pass that within two years Charles Juxon once more asked her to be his wife.  She hesitated long—­fully half an hour, the squire thought; but in the end she put out her small hand and laid it in his, and thanked God that a man so generous and true, and whom she so honestly loved, was to be her husband as well as her friend and protector.  Charles James Juxon smoothed his hair with his other hand, and his blue eyes were a little moistened.

“God bless you, Mary,” he said; and that was all.

Then the Reverend Augustin Ambrose married them in the church of Saint Mary’s, between Christmas and New Year’s Day; and the wedding-party consisted of Mrs. Ambrose and Eleanor Goddard and John Short, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.  And again years passed by, and Nellie grew in beauty as John grew in reputation; and Nellie had both brothers and sisters, as she had longed to have, and to her, their father was as her own; so that there was much harmony and peace and goodwill towards men in Billingsfield Hall.  John came often and stayed long, and was ever welcome; for though Mary Goddard’s youth returned with the daffodils and the roses of the first spring after Walter’s death, John’s fleeting passion returned not, and perhaps its place was better taken.  Year by year, as he came to refresh himself from hard work with a breath of the country air, he saw the little girl grow to the young maiden of sixteen, and he saw her beauty ripen again to the fulness of womanhood; and at last, when she was one and twenty years of age he in his turn put out his hand and asked her to take him—­which she did, for better or worse, but to all appearances for better.  For John Short had prospered mightily in the world, and had come to think his first great success as very small and insignificant as compared with what he had done since.  But his old simplicity was in him yet, and was the cause of much of his prosperity, as it generally is when it is found together with plenty of brains.  It was doubtless because he was so very simple that when he found that he loved Eleanor Goddard he did not hesitate to ask the convict’s daughter to be his wife.  His interview with Mr. Juxon was characteristic.

“You know what you are doing, John?” asked the squire.  He always called him John, now.

“Perfectly,” replied the scholar, “I am doing precisely what my betters have done before me with such admirable result.”