“Why, you see, Gertrude, if I may call you so, if I had had this paper I should probably have made a fight and struggled on in the law. And if I had, it seems to stand to reason I shouldn’t have been here!” “No; you’d have been happily married by this to Eleanor St. Clair!” “Who is much more happily married to George Wright, and I am free to say what say I must before I leave for London and my work. Can’t you guess what it is I would say, Gertrude? I’m not much of a man to offer to any woman, but such as I am I love you, Gertrude. I’m poor, you are rich or will be; I’m tainted, you are pure, unsullied. But, there, I think you know me as I am. Say, Gertrude, is there in your heart any tiny seedling of love for me that time and the warmth of my love may woo to life and growth?” Edward had risen and now stood before the girl to whom he pleaded, who drooped her eyes before the ardour of his gaze, her bosom fluttering ’neath her modest dress like a prisoned bird that beats its bars, the rich colour suffusing the pale brow and cheeks. “I think I have loved you, Edward, since that day in the Police Court. Oh! it nearly broke my heart when I heard how sadly you had fallen from what I dreamed you might be, and shall from what, God willing, you may be yet.” “And you will help, Gertrude?” “Aye, that I will.” And she rose and placed her hands in his and spake to him as Ruth the Maobitish damsel, spake to Naomi, and as Edward drew her to his breast and kissed the lips that met his he murmured: “The Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.” And this is the end of my story, and yet but the real beginning of the lives that were joined before God’s altar by the Rev. Denis Caird. The wedding presents were neither costly nor numerous, but they included one from Eleanor St Clair, now Lady Wright, for that ambitious matron never rested till she saw her spouse a member for the Louth division, and, once in Parliament, that gentleman wisely refrained from speech, “never thought of thinking for himself at all, but always voted at his party’s call”; and in due time the Premier of the day, yielding, it was said, to the blandishments of that brilliant leader of society, Mrs. George Wright, rewarded him with a baronetcy. And what of Miss Amelia Wrigley and her amorous Sam? Alas! that lady never realised her modest ambitions. Mr. Storth prospered, as indeed he deserved to prosper, in the profession of his choice; but much beer, added to a plethoric habit and a choleric temperament, induced an apoplectic seizure from which he never rallied, and Miss Wrigley still lives in maiden meditation, if not fancy free, still to be wooed and won. THE END. End of Project Gutenberg's Sister Gertrude, by Daniel Frederick Edward Sykes