We were married two days later, at the same church as Faulkner and Violet--and spent a delightful honeymoon in Denmark and in Norway. Then we returned to dear old London, Lady Thorold having taken up her abode in a small house in Upper Brook Street. Our most devoted friend to-day is Henry Whichelo--Harry, as he likes us both to call him. He knows everything of the past, yet no syllable of our secret will ever pass his lips. Not a week goes by but he dines at our table, full of his quiet humour, yet sometimes as we sit smoking together in the evening, the subject of those strange happenings--how fresh they still are in the memory of both of us--comes uppermost in our conversation. "Ah, my dear old Dick," Harry said to me the other night, as we talked incidentally of the fire at Chateau d'Uzerche, "how I should have loved to see you sliding down that rope! Young Faulkner has often told me of your really wonderful sang-froid!" My "sang-froid in moments of crisis" is now a standing joke against me! Vera, it was, who first started it, I believe. Well--I forgive her. I brought it on myself entirely, and must bear the consequences of my overweening conceit in the past! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A warm evening in August. The end of a stifling day. As I sit writing the final lines of this strange narrative in my cosy little study in our new home--no, our home is not in tiny Rutland, but overlooking Hampstead Heath, a part of London that my wife loves--the crimson sun sinks slowly in the grey haze lying over the great city below. Vera is here with me, in her pale pink dinner-gown, and her fair hair brushes my cheek as she bends over me. Now her soft cheek is pressed to mine. The blood-red afterglow burns and dies. The summer light is fading. The only sound is the whirr of a car going towards the Spaniards. The air outside is breathless, for the day has been terribly oppressive. I raise my smiling face to her sweet countenance, and now, all at once, she stoops lower still, until on a sudden access of emotion, she passionately kisses my lips. "Vera, my love!" I exclaim, looking up into her great blue eyes. "Why--why, what's the matter, my darling?" Her eyes are brimming with tears. Her red lips move, but no words escape them. The corners of her mouth are twitching. "My darling--my own darling, what is it?" I cry, rising to my feet, and folding my arms tenderly about her. Her head is upon my shoulder. She is weeping bitterly. "Dick," she exclaims, hardly above a whisper. "Oh, Dick--my darling, my own darling boy, I have been sitting here thinking--dreaming of the past, of all we have been through--of those awful days and nights of anxiety and of dread terror. And now," the words came with a sob, "oh! I am so completely happy with you, my dearest--so absolutely happy. I can't describe it. I hardly know--"