He had, indeed, infinite cause for satisfaction. He had a thousand motives for joy, and even for triumph. That which had been for many years the first, the great object of his existence, was now accomplished, and accomplished, though not without pain, and difficulty, and danger, still without one action which he could look back upon with sorrow or with regret. He felt that, though he had been tempted to do things which he would afterwards have repented, he had resisted the temptation, and had struggled nobly as well against himself as against the injustice of others. Whatever might result from the circumstances in which he was placed, he had succeeded in that great object of clearing his mother's memory from a stain. The Earl, in the presence of many witnesses, had more than once acknowledged the marriage which for eight-and-twenty years he had concealed and denied; and Langford doubted not that the same good providence which had led him so far through such tortuous paths to success, would accomplish the rest in good time, nor leave unfinished the work begun. It was a blessing, too, when he gazed on Alice Herbert, the beautiful and the beloved! to feel that the only stigma upon his name, which even the eye of prejudice could have seen, was removed, and that her father's views of illegitimate birth would not in his case mingle any degree of pain with that approbation which in other respects he had given so joyfully. He sat beside her, then, giving way to the extreme of happiness; and, strange to say, the love which in their last meeting had been new and timid in the hearts of both, had now, by the events of deep interest, by the dangers, by the sorrows, by the anxieties which they had passed through together--by all the various circumstances, thoughts, and feelings in which the fate of each had been associated with that of the other, been taught to feel like old and tried affection, had lost much of the shyness of novelty; and Alice allowed the hand which he had taken, to rest in his, while on their onward journey he told as much of the strange tale of his past life as he could do without embarrassing the story with the names of others whose fate was yet uncertain, but might be affected by the very share they had taken in all that had passed regarding him. He mentioned not the name of Franklin Gray, but he took his own history far back, and told her and her father that long ago, in the days of the civil wars, many an Englishman, driven forth from his native land, had sought refuge in France; that many of them, broken in fortunes, and bankrupt even of hope, had become mere adventurers, and had established for their countrymen the reputation of bad and reckless men.