The squire has gone home, and all the house is at rest; but I still look out of my little attic window whence I have seen the sea for so many years. Below me a mist lies upon the dike like a white pall upon some cherished grave. It is just such a night as that night ten years ago—only with a difference: the dim plain is not so cold, the light has a promise of brightness. And in my heart, too, there is a brightness which I am almost afraid to believe can be mine. I am happy because Joyce is happy, because Joyce is beautiful once more as she was beautiful when I first wanted a lover to love her. But it is not only thankfulness for the stain blotted out, peaceful resignation to the inevitable, which makes light in my soul to-night. There is a new picture growing slowly out of the clouds as they part and melt around the moon; there is a new harmony coming to me at last out of the very monotony of the marsh-land.
Above the lonely plain the night is blue and vast.
THE END.
Transcriber's Notes.
[Page 35]: changed ofter to after
[Page 142]: changed You've sister to Your sister
[Page 146]: changed heeard to heard
[Page 215]: removed the word 'the' from 'said the mother'
[Page 233]: changed instincttively to instinctively