Poor little Puddock, on the other hand, had heard, more than a week before this message of peace arrived, the whole story of Gertrude’s engagement to Lord Dunoran, as we may now call Mr. Mervyn, with such sensations as may be conjectured.  His heart, of course, was torn; but having sustained some score of similar injuries in that region upon other equally harrowing occasions, he recovered upon this with all favourable symptoms, and his wounds healed with the first intention.  He wore his chains very lightly, indeed.  The iron did not enter into his soul; and although, of course, ’he could never cease but with his life to dwell upon the image of his fleeting dream—­the beautiful nymph of Belmont,’ I have never heard that his waist grew at all slimmer, or that his sleep or his appetite suffered during the period of his despair.

The good little fellow was very glad to hear from Cluffe, who patronised him most handsomely, that Aunt Rebecca had consented to receive him once more into her good graces.

’And the fact is, Puddock, I think I may undertake to promise you’ll never again be misunderstood in that quarter,’ said Cluffe, with a mysterious sort of smile.

’I’m sure, dear Cluffe, I’m grateful as I ought, for your generous pleading on my poor behalf, and I do prize the good will of that most excellent lady as highly as any, and owe her, beside, a debt of gratitude for care and kindness such as many a mother would have failed to bestow.’

‘Mother, indeed!  Why, Puddock, my boy, you forget you’re no chicken,’ said Cluffe, a little high.

‘And to-morrow I will certainly pay her my respects,’ said the lieutenant, not answering Cluffe’s remark.

So Gertrude Chattesworth, after her long agitation—­often despair—­was tranquil at last, and blessed in the full assurance of the love which was henceforth to be her chief earthly happiness.

‘Madam was very sly,’ said Aunt Becky, with a little shake of her head, and a quizzical smile; and holding up her folded fan between her finger and thumb, in mimic menace as she glanced at Gertrude.  ’Why, Mr. Mordaunt, on the very day—­the day we had the pleasant luncheon on the grass—­when, as I thought, she had given you your quietus—­’twas quite the reverse, and you had made a little betrothal, and duped the old people so cleverly ever after.’

‘You have forgiven me, dear aunt,’ said the young lady, kissing her very affectionately, ’but I will never quite forgive myself.  In a moment of great agitation I made a hasty promise of secrecy, which, from the moment ’twas made, was to me a never-resting disquietude, misery, and reproach.  If you, my dearest aunt, knew, as he knows, all the anxieties, or rather the terrors, I suffered during that agitating period of concealment—­’

‘Indeed, dear Madam,’ said Mordaunt—­or as we may now call him, Lord Dunoran—­coming to the rescue, ’’twas all my doing; on me alone rests all the blame.  Selfish it hardly was.  I could not risk the loss of my beloved; and until my fortunes had improved, to declare our situation would have been too surely to lose her.  Henceforward I have done with mystery. I will never have a secret from her, nor she from you.’