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“I’ve found the most wonderful photographs of pictures of Arden Castle,” said Aunt Edith, later on. “We can restore the castle perfectly from them. I do wish I knew where the original pictures were.”
“I’m afraid we can’t restore the castle,” said Lord Arden laughing; “our little fortune’s enough to keep us going quite comfortably—but it won’t rebuild Norman masonry.”
“I do wish we could have found the buried treasure,” said Edred.
“We’ve got treasure enough,” said Aunt Edith, looking at Uncle Jim.
As for what Elfrida thinks—well, I wish you could have seen her face when she went into the parlour that evening after Aunt Edith had knelt down to meet them on equal terms, and tell them of the treasure of love and joy that had come home to Arden.
There was Lord Arden, looking exactly like the Lord Arden she had known in the Gunpowder Plot days, and also exactly like the daddy she had known all her life, sitting at ease in the big chair just underneath the secret panel behind which Sir Edward Talbot had hidden when he was pretending to be the Chevalier St. George. His dear face was just the same and the smile on it was her own smile—the merry, tender, twinkling smile that was for her and for no one else in the world. It was just a moment that she stood at the door. But it was one of these moments that are as short as a watch-tick, and as long as a year. She stood there and asked herself, “Have I dreamed it all? Isn’t there really any Mouldiwarp or any treasure?”
And then a great wave of love and longing caught at her, and she knew that, Mouldiwarp or no Mouldiwarp, the treasure was hers, and in one flash she was across the room and in her father’s arms, sobbing and laughing and saying again and again—
“Oh, my daddy! Oh, my daddy, my daddy!”
THE END