Mr. Willis made no reply, but the trouble left his face, and when he spoke again it was quite cheerfully. The conversation turned to Mrs. Steer, and Angel took out her letter from her pocket and read it aloud amidst much merriment. By that time they had reached Haresdown House, where they found supper awaiting them, and Mrs. Vallance ready to assure her master that everything had gone well during his absence.
There remains but little of my story to be told. Mr. Willis' picture— "Righteousness and Peace" —made him famous as a painter, and he has often been heard to say that only one who has waited can understand the sweetness of the realization of hope deferred. He and his children still make their home with Uncle Edward at Haresdown House. Gerald is becoming a fine manly fellow, and the path he is humbly trying to walk is very different to that broad road he pursued on his arrival at Wreyford. Angel's affection for her brother is as deep and unselfish as it always was; but she has real cause to be proud of him nowadays, when she knows she may trust in his sense of honour and believe in his word. Gilbert Mickle is in Paris, studying in a well-known art school, happy in the work he has chosen, whilst the other Mickle children are still at home, on the best of terms with the young folks at Haresdown House. Reginald Hope has lately entered a large London hospital as a medical student; he means when he has taken his diploma to join his father in practice at Wreyford; he has wonderfully changed of late for the better, so that those who are interested in him trust that, by God's grace, he will become a good and trustworthy man.
Miss Goodwin is much the same as ever; perhaps a few lines have been added to the network of wrinkles on her face, but the clear blue eyes retain their youthful expression. She still tends her flowers, and is, in short, the same odd mixture of shrewdness and childishness, incapable of understanding the flight of time as she was when we first made her acquaintance. A few simple words Mrs. Mickle once said to her made a deep impression on her mind, and she has acquired the habit of repeating them softly to herself—
"Time only affects the things which perish; love is for eternity."
Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.