"Ah, _par ma foi!_ but I am the good fairy, after all!" muttered the chevalier, hugging his fancy little self, and pacing about near them, with a protecting air, as if they were his especial _proteges_. "I feel like Guardian Angel of their fortunes. Saint Ludovic--_par la messe_, it sounds well!" "Thank Heaven! Ethel Brand's incomprehensible will has explained itself at last!" mused Davenport, laying down his crumpled _Times_, "and it has proved itself to be the wisest will ever the Brands made. Married in spite of themselves, and as happy as love can make them in spite of a plain face, on the one side, and a reputation that the dogs wouldn't pick up once, on the other. He's a saved man, and she's a happy woman--dear, faithful Margaret. What glorious news for old Gay." * * * * * When Mrs. St. Udo Brand came home to Seven-Oak Waaste, she found a letter awaiting her, and in its many pages she found at last the true history of the man who had been the Sleuth-Hound of Castle Brand: CONVICT SHIP FEARLESS, March --, '63. "MISS WALSINGHAM:--As you are a remarkably clever woman, and I have always been an admirer of fair play, I will give you your dues, and own that in our little game you had the best of it, and deserved to have. "I don't bear you malice for this cursed mess which you've pushed me into, although I have you only to blame for it, for perhaps I didn't go the right way to work with you and I was a confounded fool for my pains. "Yes I've been a lover of fair play all through my dodging life, ever since I was big enough to run at my father with a knife for making my mother cry; and since in our desperate little game together you won, I think it but fair play to own it, and to show you the few trumps with which I fought against your full hand. "I'm sent back to banishment for life, and you are, I hear, a happy bride, coming home with St. Udo Brand; but if I know the practical good sense you possess, you won't toss this into the fire till you've read it all, and wasted a few good-hearted regrets on the wretch whose luck was so infernally poor. "Forty years ago, Colonel Cathcart Brand, only son of Ethel Brand, Dowager of Seven-Oak Waaste, went to Cuba, which was a military station then as now, and fell in with a splendid-looking Cuban girl called Zerlini Barelli.