In a corner of the carriage was the body of what seemed a young man costumed like a tramp.  It was Marjorie Lindon.

So far as a most careful search revealed, that was all the compartment contained.

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER

It is several years since I bore my part in the events which I have rapidly sketched,—­or I should not have felt justified in giving them publicity.  Exactly how many years, for reasons which should be sufficiently obvious, I must decline to say.

Marjorie Lindon still lives.  The spark of life which was left in her, when she was extricated from among the debris of the wrecked express, was fanned again into flame.  Her restoration was, however, not merely an affair of weeks or months, it was a matter of years.  I believe that, even after her physical powers were completely restored—­in itself a tedious task—­she was for something like three years under medical supervision as a lunatic.  But all that skill and money could do was done, and in course of time—­the great healer—­the results were entirely satisfactory.

Her father is dead,—­and has left her in possession of the family estates.  She is married to the individual who, in these pages, has been known as Paul Lessingham.  Were his real name divulged she would be recognised as the popular and universally reverenced wife of one of the greatest statesmen the age has seen.

Nothing has been said to her about the fateful day on which she was—­consciously or unconsciously—­paraded through London in the tattered masculine habiliments of a vagabond.  She herself has never once alluded to it.  With the return of reason the affair seems to have passed from her memory as wholly as if it had never been, which, although she may not know it, is not the least cause she has for thankfulness.  Therefore what actually transpired will never, in all human probability, be certainly known and particularly what precisely occurred in the railway carriage during that dreadful moment of sudden passing from life unto death.  What became of the creature who all but did her to death; who he was—­if it was a ‘he,’ which is extremely doubtful; whence he came; whither he went; what was the purport of his presence here,—­to this hour these things are puzzles.

Paul Lessingham has not since been troubled by his old tormentor.  He has ceased to be a haunted man.  None the less he continues to have what seems to be a constitutional disrelish for the subject of beetles, nor can he himself be induced to speak of them.  Should they be mentioned in a general conversation, should he be unable to immediately bring about a change of theme, he will, if possible, get up and leave the room.  More, on this point he and his wife are one.

The fact may not be generally known, but it is so.  Also I have reason to believe that there still are moments in which he harks back, with something like physical shrinking, to that awful nightmare of the past, and in which he prays God, that as it is distant from him now so may it be kept far off from him for ever.