He took Aunt Becky’s hand.  ‘Am I, too, forgiven?’

He held it for a second, and then kissed it.

Aunt Becky smiled, with one of her pleasant little blushes, and looked down on the carpet, and was silent for a moment; and then, as they afterwards thought a little oddly, she said,

’That censor must be more severe than I, who would say that concealment in matters of the heart is never justifiable; and, indeed, my dear,’ she added, quite in a humble way, ‘I almost think you were right.’

Aunt Becky’s looks and spirits had both improved from the moment of this eclaircissement.  A load was plainly removed from her mind.  Let us hope that her comfort and elation were perfectly unselfish.  At all events, her heart sang with a quiet joy, and her good humour was unbounded.  So she stood up, holding Lord Dunoran’s hand in hers, and putting her white arm round her niece’s neck, she kissed her again and again, very tenderly, and she said—­

‘How very happy, Gertrude, you must be!’ and then she went quickly from the room, drying her eyes.

Happy indeed she was, and not least in the termination of that secrecy which was so full of self-reproach and sometimes of distrust.  From the evening of that dinner at the King’s House, when in an agony of jealousy she had almost disclosed to poor little Lily the secret of their engagement, down to the latest moment of its concealment, her hours had been darkened by care, and troubled with ceaseless agitations.

Everything was now going prosperously for Mervyn—­or let us call him henceforward Lord Dunoran.  Against the united evidence of Sturk and Irons, two independent witnesses, the crown were of opinion that no defence was maintainable by the wretch, Archer.  The two murders were unambiguously sworn to by both witnesses.  A correspondence, afterwards read in the Irish House of Lords, was carried on between the Irish and the English law officers of the crown—­for the case, for many reasons, was admitted to be momentous—­as to which crime he should be first tried for—­the murder of Sturk, or that of Beauclerc.  The latter was, in this respect, the most momentous—­that the cancelling of the forfeiture which had ruined the Dunoran family depended upon it.

‘But are you not forgetting, Sir,’ said Mr. Attorney in consultation, ’that there’s the finding of felo de se against him by the coroner’s jury?’

‘No, Sir,’ answered the crown solicitor, well pleased to set Mr. Attorney right.  ’The jury being sworn, found only that he came by his death, but whether by gout in his stomach, or by other disease, or by poison, they had no certain knowledge; there was therefore no such coroner’s verdict, and no forfeiture therefore.’

’And I’m glad to hear it, with all my heart.  I’ve seen the young gentleman, and a very pretty young nobleman he is,’ said Mr. Attorney.  Perhaps he would not have cared if this expression of his good will had got round to my lord.