Tabitha often says that she owes her present happiness to Aunt Rennie, for if it had not been for the misery of the approaching separation, John, oppressed by the sense of his poverty and humble prospects, would never have had courage to tell her of his love.  And I have sometimes amused myself by reflecting how Aunt Rennie’s shrewdness, intelligence and determination, instead of working out her own ends, were all the time furthering the thing that was most opposed to her wishes.

When, after those few days that followed—­days for me of heart-breaking conflict of feeling, and for my two children of tears, silent misery and struggling passion, culminating at last, when the storm burst, in complete mutual understanding, and a joint determination that carried all before it—­when, I say, Aunt Rennie, defeated, prepared to take her leave, she said a word to me which I often thought of afterwards.  “She is choosing blindfold, tinsel for gold.”  I thought of it, not on account of the expression, but of Aunt Rennie herself.  There was something in the pallor of her face, and in her tone, that made me ask myself whether there could be anything in this matter that concerned Aunt Rennie herself more closely than we thought—­and, for the moment, a new and motherly feeling rose up in my heart towards her.

Well, she has left me my two children, and though John is only “in business,” and they live on three hundred a year, they are very happy, and I am happy in their happiness.

It was a year after their marriage, that the news came that Aunt Rennie was engaged to be married to her cousin.  Horace Wetherell.  And, as I pondered on it.  I doubted whether I had, after all, quite understood the nobility of Aunt Rennie’s character.

Horace Wetherell has become an M.P., and he and his wife write books together on social problems.

Poor John will never be an M.P., but I am glad that Tabitha loved him.

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