"She is at peace now," said Wyvis, in a lower voice, "and the happiness of her later days is due to you. But how much is not due to you, Janetta! Your magic power seemed to change my poor wife's very nature: it has made my child happy: it gave all possible comfort to my mother on her dying bed—and what it has done for me no words can ever tell! No one has been to me what you have been, Janetta; the good angel of my life, always inspiring and encouraging, always ready to give me hope and strength and courage in my hours of despair."
"You must not say so: I have done nothing," she said, but she let her hand lie unresistingly between his own, as he took it and pressed it tenderly.
"Have you not? Then I have been woefully mistaken. And it has come across me strangely, Janetta, of late, that of all the losses I have had, one of the greatest is the loss of my kinship with you. No doubt you have thought of that: John Wyvis, the ploughman's son, is not your cousin, Wyvis Brand."
"I never remembered it," said Janetta.
"Then I must remind you of it now. I cannot call you Cousin Janet any longer. May I call you something else, dear, so that I may not lose you out of my life? I want you to be something infinitely closer and dearer and sweeter than a cousin, Janetta; will you forgive me all my errors and be my wife?"
And when she had whispered her reply, he took her in his arms and called her, as her father used to call her—
"My faithful Janet!"
And she thought that she had never borne a sweeter name.
THE END.