EPILOGUE.
There is little more to tell of the people who have figured in this story.
Fanny continues to flourish at Notting Hill, the absence of children being the one drop in her cup and that of her husband.
"But, perhaps," as Lucy privately remarks, "it is as well; for I don't think the Marshes would have understood how to bring up a child."
For Lucy, in common with all young matrons of the day, has decided views on matters concerned with the mental, moral, and physical culture of the young. Unlike many thinkers, she does not hesitate to put her theories into practice, and the two small occupants of her nursery bear witness to excellent training.
The photography, however, has not been crowded out by domestic duties; and no infant with pretensions to fashion omits to present itself before Mrs. Jermyn's lens. Lucy has succumbed to the modern practice of specialising, and only the other day carried off a medal for photographs of young children from an industrial exhibition. Her husband is no less successful in his own line. Having permanently abandoned the paint-brush for the needle, he bids fair to take a high place among the black and white artists of the day.
The Watergates have also an addition to their household, in the shape of a stout person with rosy cheeks and stiff white petticoats, who receives a great deal of attention from his parents. Gertrude wonders if he will prove to have inherited his father's scientific tastes, or the literary tendencies of his mother. She devoutly hopes that it is the former.
Conny flourishes as a married woman no less than as a girl. She and the Jermyns dine out now and then at one another's houses; her old affection for Gertrude continues, in spite of the fact that their respective husbands are quite unable (as she says) to hit it off.