Kenelm, from the depths of his noble and generous heart, forgave him. “You did wrong me, Ronald,” he said to him one day; “but you have suffered so cruelly I forget the wrong in remembering the suffering,” and from that day they were again like brothers. “There is one thing that grieves me,” said Sir Ronald, despondingly, to his friend, “when I die the title will be extinct, and the estates will pass to one who is a perfect stranger to me.” “You will marry again,” said Kenelm. “You are young, and there is a broad stretch of life before you. You loved Clarice--I do not doubt it--but your heart is not buried with her, as mine is. You will marry, and make the old house glad with bright faces.” “Never,” he said, moodily. “My one short dream of happiness faded long ago; it cannot revive.” Mr. Eyrle wondered much. “For my own part,” he said, musingly, “I live for but one object--to find out who did that deed, and bring them to justice. When that is done my life work is ended. Why, Ronald, I cannot understand your reason for not re-marrying.” The white, haggard face was raised to his--the thin, worn hands. “Do I look much like a man whose thoughts run upon marriage?” he asked, mournfully; and Kenelm was obliged to answer “No.” But one spring morning (the grass had grown green on Clarice’s grave) there came to him a messenger of comfort--a little note containing only a few lines, but to that unhappy man they opened the gates of Paradise. “Dear Sir Ronald,” so it ran, “I am sorry to hear of your continued ill-health. I only returned home yesterday, or I should have written to express my sympathy sooner. Try to rouse yourself. They tell me you are very ill. From your sincere friend, “HERMIONE LORRISTON.” He bowed his head over the paper and wept aloud. “The dove with the olive leaf!” he said. “Shall I refuse it? Heaven’s gates open. Shall I close them and die in this outer darkness--this utter despair? Or, rather, shall I take the comfort Heaven sends me, and make her my own?” CHAPTER XXVII. THE OLIVE LEAF. Intense rapture filled the heart of Sir Ronald Alden when he read that little note. He had been so long in the night of sorrow, so long in the wide, waste waters of affliction, so long dead in life, that this word from the woman he loved so passionately was in very truth an olive branch to him. He went to the mirror and looked at his face; it was handsome still, though thin, haggard and bearing the traces of deep emotions; he looked like a man on whom some terrible blight had fallen, for whom life had proved a failure and a wreck. “Now,” he said to himself, “I will bid good-by to sorrow. Clarice has been avenged. The years of gloom that I have passed since her death should atone for my sin in marrying her without love. The white dove beckons me, the olive branch has come, a long farewell to the night, and hail to the morning! My love has saved me, whom I have worshiped with more than human affection.”