The foreign gent recovered his wound, but acquired rheumatism and a dislike for midnight expeditions.
Reginald galloped a year or two over seven hundred miles of colony, sowing his wild oats as he flew, but is now a prosperous squatter, very fond of sleeping in the open air. England was not big enough for the bold Bohemian. He does very well where he is.
Old Meyrick died, and left his wife a little estate in the next county. Drake asked her hand at the funeral. She married him in six months, and migrated to the estate in question; for Sir Charles refused her a lease of his farm, not choosing to have her near him.
Her new abode was in the next parish to her sister's.
La Marsh set herself to convert Mary, and often exhorted her to penitence; she bore this pretty well for some time, being overawed by old reminiscences of sisterly superiority: but at last her vanity rebelled. “Repent! and Repent!” cried she. “Why you be like a cuckoo, all in one song. One would think I had been and robbed a church. 'Tis all very well for you to repent, as led a fastish life at starting: but I never done nothing as I'm ashamed on.”
Richard Bassett said one day to Wheeler, “Old fellow, there is not a worse poison than Hate. It has made me old before my time. And what does it all come to? We might just as well have kept quiet; for my grandson will inherit Huntercombe and Bassett, after all—”
“Thanks to the girl you would not ring the bells for.”
Sir Charles and Lady Bassett lead a peaceful life after all their troubles, and renew their youth in their children, of whom Ruperta is one, and as dear as any.
Yet there is a pensive and humble air about Lady Bassett, which shows she still expiates her fault, though she knows it will always be ignored by him for whose sake she sinned.
In summing her up, it may be as well to compare this with the unmixed self-complacency of Mrs. Drake.