"It's a solemn truth, though a disgraceful truth, but she shall never come into the house that shelters me. I'll burn it down first. Where's your sister?"
"She is ill in her room."
"Yes, I dare say. But she's had a hand in this, and I'll pay her for it, or my name isn't Jemima Rhodes. Tell her so, with my compliments. Good morning!"
With this abrupt adieu the spinster took herself off, tugging away at her gauntlet, or what was left of it, and diversifying the movement with a vicious crack of her whip now and then.
Elizabeth smiled and went upstairs again. Thus the great events of the day ended.
In less than a week Tom Fuller was quietly married, and took his wife at once on board a steamer bound for Europe. She had come forth from her sick room greatly subdued and changed in many respects, but able, from her peculiar character, to put a veil between her and the past, which would have been impossible to a woman like Elizabeth.
I am happy to state that Dolf's treachery met with its proper reward. Clorinda succeeded in saving her money, and she married the parson, leaving Dolf to his shame and remorse. Victoria gave him the cold shoulder, and made herself so intimate with a new male Adonis, who came to the house as domestic, that Dolf's days were full of misery and his nights made restless with legions of nightmares.
The house by the sea shore stands up in its old picturesque stateliness, and within the sunshine never fails, and the summer of content is never disturbed.
Old Benson, a very short time after these events, became possessed of a fine tract of land running back from the point where his house stood; how he paid for it, and got a clear deed, no one could tell except himself and Mr. Mellen. It is certain that both of these men knew how to keep a secret, for to this day it is utterly unknown in the neighborhood, that Elizabeth ever lay ill and suffering in that good man's house. The servants speak of her visit to New York about that time, and so this great family mystery ended.