My wife, Lord Rutland, and I waited in the watch-room above the castle gates for the coming of Dorothy and John; and when they came--but I will not try to describe the scene. It were a vain effort. Tears and laughter well compounded make the sweetest joy; grief and joy the truest happiness; happiness and pain the grandest soul, and none of these may be described. We may analyze them, and may take them part from part; but, like love, they cannot be compounded. We may know all the component parts, but when we try to create these great emotions in description, we lack the subtle compounding flux to unite the ingredients, and after all is done, we have simply said that black is black and that white is white. Next day, in the morning, Madge and I started for our new home in France. We rode up the hill down which poor Dolcy took her last fatal plunge, and when we reached the crest, we paused to look back. Standing on the battlements, waving a kerchief in farewell to us, was the golden-crowned form of a girl. Soon she covered her face with her kerchief, and we knew she was weeping Then we, also, wept as we turned away from the fair picture; and since that far-off morning--forty long, long years ago--we have not seen the face nor heard the voice of our sweet, tender friend. Forty years! What an eternity it is if we tear it into minutes! L'ENVOI The fire ceases to burn; the flames are sucked back into the earth; the doe's blood has boiled away; the caldron cools, and my shadowy friends--so real to me--whom I love with a passionate tenderness beyond my power to express, have sunk into the dread black bank of the past, and my poor, weak wand is powerless to recall them for the space of even one fleeting moment. So I must say farewell to them; but all my life I shall carry a heart full of tender love and pain for the fairest, fiercest, gentlest, weakest, strongest of them all--Dorothy Vernon. MALCOLM POSSIBLY IN ERROR Malcolm Vernon is the only writer on the life of Dorothy Vernon who speaks of Rutland Castle. All others writing on the subject say that Belvoir Castle was the home of the Earl of Rutland. No other writer mentions the proposed marriage, spoken of by Malcolm, between Dorothy and Lord Derby's son. They do, however, say that Dorothy had an elder sister who married a Stanley, but died childless, leaving Dorothy sole heiress to Sir George Vernon's vast estate. All writers agree with Malcolm upon the main fact that brave Dorothy eloped with John Manners and brought to him the fair estate of Haddon, which their descendant, the present Duke of Rutland, now possesses. No other writer speaks of Mary Stuart having been at Haddon, and many chroniclers disagree with Malcolm as to the exact date of her imprisonment in Lochleven and her escape. In all other essential respects the history of Dorothy Vernon as told by Malcolm agrees with other accounts of her life.