Elizabeth could only look her gratitude. She felt, as was most true, that this was not a cause for words or reason. Falkner in himself offered, or did not offer, full excuse for the generosity of Neville. No one could see him, and not allow that the affectionate, duteous son in no way derogated from his reverence for his mother's memory, by entirely forgiving him who honoured her as an earthly angel, and had deplored, through years of unutterable anguish, the mortal injury done her. Satisfied in his own mind that he acted rightly, Neville did not seek for any other approval; and yet he gladly accepted it from Elizabeth, whose heart, touched to its very core by his nobleness, felt an almost painful weight of gratitude and love; she tried to express it: fortunately, between lovers mere language is not necessary ineffectually to utter that which transcends all expression. Neville felt himself most sweetly thanked; a more happy pair never trod this lovely earth than the two that, closely linked hand in hand, and with hearts open and true as the sunlight about them, enjoyed the sweetest hour of love, the first of acknowledged perpetual union, beneath the majestic, deep-shadowing thickets of Belleforest. All that had seemed so difficult now took its course easily. They did not any of them seek to account for or to justify the course they took. They each knew that they could not do other than they did. Elizabeth could not break faith with Falkner--Neville could not renounce her; it might be strange--but it must be so; they three must remain together through life, despite all of tragic and miserable that seemed to separate them. Even Lady Cecil admitted that there was no choice. Elizabeth must be won--she was too dear a treasure to be voluntarily renounced. In a few weeks, the wedding-day of Sir Gerard Neville and Miss Raby being fixed, she joined them at Belleforest, and saw, with genuine pleasure, the happiness of the two persons whom she esteemed and loved most in the world, secured. Mrs. Raby's warm heart reaped its own reward in witnessing this felicitous conclusion of her interference. Whether the reader of this eventful tale will coincide with every other person, fully in the confidence of all, in the opinion that such was the necessary termination of a position full of difficulty, is hard to say--but so it was; and it is most certain that no woman who ever saw Rupert Falkner but thought Neville just and judicious; and if any man disputed this point, when he saw Elizabeth he was an immediate convert.