"I do not doubt you, Edgar," said Mr. Clive, very, very faintly. "I have watched and known you from a boy, as you say, and I know that your enthusiasms, in love or friendship, are not only warm, but enduring. Mine have been so too, but there has been too much vehemence with me. I doubt not your intentions in the least either; but I only doubt that others may interfere to forbid that which you are yourself thoroughly disposed to perform. You say that you are your own master: I know not what you mean." Edgar shook his head sadly, and replied, "My father has gone where her father is going. We have been children together, and we shall be orphans together. In all things our fate will be united. She is mine; I am hers; and in heart and spirit, in love and truth, in hopes and fears, in joys and sorrows, on this earth and I trust in heaven, we shall be one." "Amen!" said Mr. Clive; and raising his hand, as if in the act of giving a solemn benediction, his head sunk back on the pillow, and the spirit took its flight. * * * * * * * * * * There were many tears shed at Brandon House and Clive Grange; and on one day, followed by the same mourners, carried to the same burial ground, that of the old Priory, the representatives of the ancient and noble houses of Adelon and Clive were committed to the earth. They had died in the same faith in which they and their ancestors lived; and a Roman Catholic priest, as amiable and excellent as he whom it has been my painful task in these pages to depict was base and evil, solemnised the last rites of their church amongst the mouldering remains of ages past away. Some months went by, and Eda Brandon and Helen Clive kept their mourning state at the Grange, while Edgar took up his abode at the lodge of Brandon Park, and surrounded with books, seemed to forget himself in deep study, except during those hours which he spent with her he loved. Dudley was absent more than once, and remained absent for several weeks at a time; but Eda Brandon did not think his passion cooled, and she knew there was no cause to suppose so; for he was engaged in sweeping the last trace of the convict from his name, and recording the proofs of his innocence in such a manner that doubt or shame could never visit him. He had property to claim, too, and to receive, which removed all suspicion that he sought wealth rather than love in his marriage with Eda Brandon; and towards the autumn, about the same period of the year when he had first visited Brandon Park, his fate was united with hers, on the same day that Helen became the wife of Edgar Adelon.