For her decision is right for herself, as once I told her. She has found happiness--more happiness than would have come to her if she had never fled from Hatcham Ford, more happiness, I dare to think (though never to say!), than would in the end have been hers, had Octon never faced the Frenchman's pistol at Tours. She is not made for an equal partnership, no more than for a submission or surrender. How hardly she accepted a partnership at all, even with the man whose love has altered all her life! It is her nature to be alone, and through a sore ordeal she came to that discovery. Once, I think, and in just one sentence she showed me her true heart, what her true and deepest instinct was--even about Leonard Octon. We were sitting by the fire one evening alone. Talk dragged and she looked listless, tired after a busy day's work, thoughtful and brooding. "What are you thinking of?" I asked. "Oh, my thoughts had gone back to the early days here. I was thinking how pleasant it would be if we had Leonard back at Hatcham Ford, dropping in after dinner." At Hatcham Ford, mind you! Dropping in after dinner! That was the time to which her wandering thoughts flew back--that the point on which their flight instinctively alighted. Not the heart-trying, heart-testing, perhaps heart-breaking, days of union and partnership, but the days of liberty and friendship. I must have smiled to myself over her answer, for she said sadly, yet with a smile herself, "I can't help it! That was what I was thinking, Austin." So think, dear mistress--and not on the harder days! Defiance, doubt, despair, are over. Abide in peace. THE END