A long sweet silence. The tempest of emotion in her arms was hushed to rest. The eternal voice of perfect love had whispered: "Peace, be still"; and there was a great calm.
At last Garth lifted his head. "Always? Always together?" he said. "Ah, that will be 'perpetual light!'"
When Simpson, pale with importance, flung open the library door, and announced: "Her Grace, the Duchess of Meldrum," Jane was seated at the piano, playing soft dreamy chords; and a slim young man, in evening dress, advanced with eager hospitality to greet his guest.
The duchess either did not see, or chose to ignore the guiding cord. She took his outstretched hand warmly in both her own.
"Goodness gracious, my dear Dal! How you surprise me! I expected to find you blind! And here you are striding about, just your old handsome self!"
"Dear Duchess," said Garth, and stooping, kissed the kind old hands still holding his; "I cannot see you, I am sorry to say; but I don't feel very blind to-night. My darkness has been lightened by a joy beyond expression."
"Oh ho! So that's the way the land lies! Now which are you going to marry? The nurse,—who, I gather, is a most respectable young person, and highly recommended; or that hussy, Jane; who, without the smallest compunction, orders her poor aunt from one end of the kingdom to the other, to suit her own convenience?"
Jane came over from the piano, and slipped her hand through her lover's arm.
"Dear Aunt 'Gina," she said; "you know you loved coming; because you enjoy a mystery, and like being a dear old 'deus ex machina,' at the right moment. And he is going to marry them both; because they both love him far too dearly ever to leave him again; and he seems to think he cannot do without either."