One is reluctant to strike a discordant note, a note of squalid tragedy, in the harmony to which the lives of Celia and Derrick moved; but this record would not be complete without an account of the ending of the man who was known as Lord Heyton. Such an ending as his was inevitable. He died in a drunken brawl in a Chinese doss-house in Manchuria. For months before his death he had been a cause of trouble and anxiety to the authorities of the district; in such a place villainy and roguery have full scope; but poor Heyton never rose to the height of either. Small and petty offences only were those which came within his capacity.
For some time he had been connected with a gang of card-sharpers, living under an alias, and depending for his food and drink upon the small wits which Providence had vouchsafed him. It was during a dispute in one of the lowest doss-houses in the place that he met his death. There had been a quarrel, a scuffle, a death-thrust with a knife by a cold-blooded Chinaman, and it was not until the authorities had searched the body, that his identity had been discovered.
Derrick received the news of the death of Miriam's husband, the one-time recognised heir to the title and estate, from the British Consul; and he received the grim tidings with something like relief. His was the task to convey the tragic information to Miriam. Of that interview nothing shall be said. She also had received the account of her husband's death with something like relief; for, to her, he had been dead long since. At one point only did she shed tears; it was when she tried, in faltering accents, to express to Derrick her gratitude for all that he and Celia had done, and were doing, to render her life free from care.
The interview, painful as it necessarily had been, saddened Derrick; but his face cleared as, on his return to the Hall, he met Celia and took her in his arms; and, as her lips clung to his, he asked himself, as he had often asked himself in odd moments of his happiness, "What have I done to deserve my luck?"