Alice had been a little nervous and tremulous before; this made her rather more so--she kissed me in a trembling, breathless way. She could not help feeling conscious of that shadow behind her, and of a certain want of air and cloud which betokened a crisis. She knew something was coming, and faltered--it was quite a secret, close, appealing touch which her arms gave me for the moment. Alice was afraid. When she sat down again she played with the clasp of the chain and unloosed it, and continued so, unconsciously dangling that loose end in her hand. “It should have a heart at it, mamma--like Clary’s,” said little Derwent. “Yes,” said I, “certainly it wants a pendant--a locket--or, as Derwie says, a heart, or a cross, or----” “For once let me supply what it wants,” said Bertie, suddenly starting forward with one of those long, noiseless steps which people only make when they are almost past speaking. He took the end of the chain from Alice’s fingers, slid his own matchless decoration on it, clasped it, let it fall. “Heart and Cross!” said Bertie, breathless with feelings he could not speak. Alice had not looked up--did not see what it was, so rapidly was all done, till it lay dark upon the white bosom of her dress, moving with the palpitations of her heart--cold, ugly, glorious--a gift far beyond all Bertie’s fortune--more precious to him than his life. She gazed at it astonished for a moment, then glanced round at us all with an amazed, inquiring glance--then faltering, and making the utmost efforts to control herself, took it in her hands, put it to her lips, and burst into an irrestrainable passion of tears. Little Derwie and I, like sensible people, took each other’s hands, and marched away. Alice did not wear her hero’s cross that night to her chain. He wore it himself, as was fit--but it did not much matter. She had taken the other invaluable and invisible appendage which Bertie offered with his glorious badge--had consented to be solemnly endowed with all his worldly goods, cross and heart included, and humbly put her chain round her neck without any pendant, in token of the unwilling bondage to which she had yielded at last. So ended, after eight years of disappointment, and _that_ early love-affair, which Colonel Bertie had long ago forgotten, my solitary enterprise in match-making. Let nobody despair. I am secure now that Estcourt shall have no alien mistress, and that all Huntingshire will not hold a happier household than that of Bertie Nugent, my heir, who has already added the highest distinction of modern chivalry to the name of his fathers and mine. THE END. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Heart and Cross, by Margaret Oliphant