“Oh, my darling, my darling! my life, my love, my husband!”

“Harriet!”

With a great cry he rose and held her to his heart.

“My wife, my wife!”

And then, weak with long illness and repeated shocks—­this last, greatest shock of all—­he sat down, faint unto death.

“Oh, my love, my wife! to think that I should hold you once more in my arms, look once more into your living face!  My wife, my wife!  How cruel, how merciless I have been to you!  May God forgive me!  I will forgive myself—­never!”

“Not one word!  Between us there can be no such thing as forgiveness.  We could neither of us have acted other than as we did.  My oath bound me—­your honor was at stake.  We have both suffered—­Heaven only knows how deeply.  But it is past now.  Nothing in this lower world shall ever come between us again, my beloved!”

“Not even death,” he said, folding her close to his heart.

One month after and Sir Everard Kingsland, his wife, and sister quitted England for the Continent, not to make the grand tour and return, but to reside for years.  England was too full of painful memories; under the sunlit skies of beautiful Italy they were going to forget.

Sybilla Silver was dead.  All her plans had failed—­her oath of vengeance was broken.  Sir Everard and his bride were triumphant.  She had failed—­miserably failed; she thought of it until she went mad—­stark, staring mad.  Her piercing shrieks rang through the stony prison all day and all night long, until one night, in a paroxysm of frenzy, she had dashed her head against the wall.  They found her, in the morning, dead.

* * * * *

Out into the lazy June sunshine the steamer glided.  With his handsome wife on his arm, the young baronet stood looking his last at his native land, his face infinitely happy.

“For years,” he said, with a smile—­“for life, perhaps, Harriet.  I feel as if I never wished to return.”

“But we shall,” she said.  “England is home.  A few happy years in fair foreign lands, and then, Everard, back to the old land.  But first, I confess, I should like again to see America, and Uncle Denover, and”—­with a little laugh—­“George Washington Parmalee.”

For Mr. Parmalee had gone back to Dobbsville, at peace with all the world, Sir Everard Kingsland included.

“You’re a brick, baronet,” his parting speech had been, as he wrung that young man’s hand; “you air, I swan!  And your wife’s another!  Long may you wave!”

Sir Everard laughed aloud now at the recollection.

“Money can never repay our obligation to that worthy artist.  May his shadow never be less!  We shall go over to Dobbsville and see him, and have our pictures taken, next year.  Look, Harriet! how the chalky cliffs are melting into the blue above!  One parting peep at England, and so a long good-by to the old land!” he said, taking off his hat, and standing, radiant and happy, with the June sunlight on his handsome head.