When she returned to her father, she brought with her a writing-case, in which were letters she had received from her seducer previous to her elopement; in this desk, for convenience of travelling, Walter Desborough had placed papers of his own, and amongst others, the letters, etc., which he had shortly before received from his brother. Long ere he recovered from the effects of Hardy’s chastisement he had forgotten where he had placed these papers, and Hardy never discovering them (he left his home and enlisted as a soldier on his release from the imprisonment the assault entailed upon him), the letters were to all intents and purposes lost, till by a chapter of accidents they fell into the hands of Lewis. The shock which led to Captain Arundel’s (or Desborough, as he should rightly have been called) sudden death was caused by reading an account of his father, Sir Hugh’s demise, in the newspaper. The clue Messrs. Jones & Levi had gained was from a shopman in the public library in which Captain Arundel had been sitting when he first became aware of his father’s decease, who gathered, from an involuntary exclamation he made at the moment, that Sir Hugh Desborough’s death was the subject which had so much excited him; this shopman had been a clerk of Messrs. Jones & Levi, and learning in their employ that knowledge was sometimes money as well as power, sold them for a couple of sovereigns the information he had acquired, giving at the same time an account of the strange death of Captain Arundel; hence their subsequent application to Lewis.
The evidence being so clear and full, Lewis had little difficulty in establishing his claim, more especially as General Grant, convinced of its justice, did not attempt to resist it on Walter’s behalf. The poor fellow himself could not be made to comprehend his change of fortune; but he did comprehend, to his inexpressible delight, that for some reason or other he was always to live with his dear Mr. Arundel, who, when months had gone by and arrangements made which he neither understood nor heeded, took him to a grand house of his own, where Faust was waiting to receive them in a great state of boisterous tail-wagging affection; and when Faust, having licked them all over, and having made them damp, dusty, and rumpled in the excess of his love, had quite done with them and gone back to a large bone on the drawing-room rug, and Lewis placing his arm round Walter’s neck, had whispered to him that he was never to go away any more, and that he hoped before very long Annie would come and live with them, Walter felt sure he had never known what it was to be quite happy till then, which fact he afterwards communicated to Faust in the strictest confidence.
Lewis’s assertion in regard to Annie was not based on mere conjecture; for General Grant—albeit he felt that, in the interview we have lately recorded between himself and Lewis, he had been decidedly out-generalled—did not again reject his late tutor’s proposal for his daughter’s hand. On the contrary, with the usual self-knowledge of worldly elderly people (that is, of those who, nine times out of ten, dictate the actions, and influence for weal or woe the future of the young and generous-hearted), the moment he became convinced that Lewis was about to inherit a baronetcy and an income little short of £10,000 a year, he contrived to persuade himself that when his first surprise had been passed, and he had become aware how deeply his daughter’s happiness was involved, he should certainly have allowed her to unite herself with Sir Lewis Desborough under his former phase of a precarious portrait-painter. But if we had been Sir Lewis, we should have felt heartily glad we had not been forced to rely on such a very “forlorn hope.”
Rose, no longer Arundel, did not enjoy the name of Desborough many weeks, for although she had particularly desired to be married on the same day as Lewis and Annie, she yet yielded the point when Ursa Major, hearing that General Grant would not allow his daughter’s wedding to take place till a year after the death of Lord Bellefield, grew so outrageous that Rose was forced to marry him out of the way, in order to prevent him from snapping and growling at every one that came near him. But this was Richard Frere’s last bearish episode; for constant association with Rose softened his little asperity of temper, which, having arisen solely from the unloved and unloving existence he had been forced by circumstances to lead, disappeared in the sunshine of a happy home.
Lord Ashford did not long survive the loss of his eldest son, and Charley Leicester, the portionless younger brother, with “a good set of teeth and nothing to eat,” is now a highly respectable peer of the realm, with a rent-roll to be computed by tens of thousands. Happy in the affection of his wife and children (for “Tarley” has already had two successors to dispute the chance of being “spoiled by papa, only that mamma won’t let him”), Charles, Lord Ashford, has but one trouble in life, though that unfortunately appears likely to prove an increasing one—viz., that those confounded fellows, Schneider & Shears, won’t make his waistcoats to fit him as they used to do, they are all too tight round the waist—and Schneider & Shears bear the blame meekly, having only last week discharged an injudicious foreman, who had been rash enough to declare that their excellent customer, Lord Ashford, was growing stout. For a short time the Countess Portici resided with her brother and sister-in-law, Alessandro having obligingly got himself knocked on the head in the cause of liberty, the reversion of this popular watchword being about the only legacy he bequeathed to his young, interesting, and not particularly disconsolate widow, who, having sown her romance, replaced the handsome Italian by a rich old French nobleman, Le Marquis de Carosse-Tranquille, irreverently translated by Bracy, who is still a bachelor and makes more puns than ever, into “My Lord Slow Coach”—a title which the mental incapacities of that venerable foreigner rendered unpleasantly appropriate.
The mighty Marmaduke de Grandeville purchased with his wife’s money a large estate in ————shire, which had belonged to his family some five hundred years before; he has since instituted a set of regulations for his tenantry, formed on the model of the feudal system, and if he be not prematurely suffocated by his own greatness, bids fair to “add a new lustre to the noble name which—ar—ahem!” etc., etc.
Mrs. Arundel carried out her design of marrying her “blighted barrister,” and by her liveliness of disposition has done more towards removing the mildew from his mind than could have been expected. As, however, in accordance with her taste, they live chiefly abroad, Lewis and Annie see but little of them.
Miss Livingstone, as she increased in years, grew harsher, stififer, and more frozen than ever, until one bitter winter’s day, happening to catch a slight additional cold, her temperature sank below the point at which animal life could be maintained, and becoming rather stififer and colder than usual, the first half of her patronymic ceased to be any longer appropriate—her last word was a cross one.
General Grant lived to a good old age, improving, under the influence of certain bright-eyed little Desboroughs, into a very amiable grandpapa.
The fate of Miles Hardy still remains a mystery; that he did not die of the wounds received in the death-struggle with Lord Bellefield was ascertained; but whether he perished in the Italian revolution, in which he was known to take an active part, or, as was rumoured, escaped in safety to America, the few who are interested in him have failed to learn.