"Stay where you are, sir; don't stir, I beg. I don't profess to know much about woman's curious little idiosyncrasies, but I'll bet a dozen of claret, that this humdrum chamber of yours where she nursed you day after day for four weeks, is the dearest place to her of all the world, and I'll go farther and say that so long as she lives the memory of this same room, sir, will have power to send the rush of fond tears up to her eyes, be she happy or miserable. You see she found you here, and got your life from Heaven, as it were, by dint of unwearied prayer, and its hallowed to her like a little sanctuary. Women are strange creatures, sir and I advise you, if you want to sway her heart to your wishes, to see her here." Lying face downward and alone, with his hands clasped in grateful thanksgiving, all the wicked recklessness and the unbelief and the cynical fatalism slipped forever from St. Udo's soul, and he turned after long years to the idol of his youth--hope crowned with Heavenly faith; and in that sweet hour of supreme humility the sheath dropped from the fruit, and the noble works of Heaven's hand turned to adore its Creator. So it came to pass that when Margaret Walsingham, standing at the doorway, too timid to approach--too womanly soft to go away, now that the man was dying for her--heard the low entreaty, "Bless me with her love--ennoble me with her love, O Heaven!" Her whole face became transfigured with joy, and she stood there a breathless and a lovely vision, listening to what she dared not believe before. "Is that my darling, standing on the threshold? Come." Folded heart to heart, her head upon its place for the first time, his arms about her in a band of love--her hour of sweet recompense has come at last, and with unutterable thrills shooting through her tremulous frame, she whispers, smiling: "I have won my own dear lord of Castle Brand." CHAPTER XXXIII. MARGARET'S HAPPY DESTINY. "By gar! _mon camarade_, and do you call yourself a man, prying into Madam Fortune's good graces? Why, she has starved you, the jade, she has given you the prison fare, she has been a vampire to you, _mon_ colonel. What for you wear that face of parchment when I come to preside over the hand-grip, and to bless, and to be the good fairy? Ah, bah! Your future may be very good, but your past has been execrably bad. I drop the tear of friendship to your _mal-de-grain_." Monsieur, the chevalier, had just arrived from New York per steamer, breezy, brisk, jocund as a stage harlequin, and rushed in upon our colonel to congratulate him after having hunted up all particulars connected with him in the little town, and had the gratification of finding affairs so much better than he feared.