Often have I congratulated myself upon my narrow escape from a sudden end on that night in the old French inn, for surely the cunning ingenuity and truly devilish resourcefulness of Asta's foster-father from the moment when he so successfully cast the blame of fraud upon his friend Arnold Edgecumbe and caused him to flee to Egypt until that night when he so nearly succeeded in taking the young girl's life, showed him to be a veritable master-criminal. But the days of darkness, insecurity and despair are happily over. The clouds have parted, and the sunshine of happiness now falls upon the dear, sweet girl who, eight months ago, knelt beside me at the altar of that grey, square-spired village church which, here as we sit in the summer sunset, we can see peeping beyond the old elm avenue across the park. "Yes, my darling, I am at last truly happy," she whispers softly in my ear, bending over to kiss me in reply to a question. "So happy that I cannot adequately describe what I feel amid this perfect peace." And so, with her sweet lingering caress upon my lips, a kiss more full of love and holy passion than ever Cleopatra gave Antony beside the Nile, I embrace her with all the tenderness of my affection, with all the strength of my very soul, and while so doing conclude this my strange personal narrative, and write-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The End. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lost Million, by William Le Queux