Sir Harold with his daughter and his friends returned to Hawkhurst. The story of Sir Harold’s return to England had preceded them, and from the moment that the party alighted at the Canterbury station until after their arrival at their own home, Sir Harold received one continual ovation. The tenantry of Hawkhurst turned out in a body to welcome home their beloved landlord. The joy bells were rung in the little village of Wyndham, and guns were fired. It was a day long to be remembered throughout that part of Kent.
The shadow that had fallen on Sir Harold’s life when he first learned the baseness of his second wife, was dispelled by the tender love and attentions of Neva and her young lover. The smiles came back to his lips and the joy to his heart, and he learned the lesson that many must learn, that life need not be all dark and desolate because one friend of the many has proved false.
A few months later the joy bells rang again, and again the tenantry of Sir Harold made merry. The occasion was the marriage of the heiress of Hawkhurst to the young Lord Towyn. It was a joyous bridal. Sir John Freise and wife, and their seven daughters were there. Mr. Atkins’ plain face beamed from the midst of the throng. Rufus Black and his gipsy-faced young wife, both happy and loving, had come down from Mount street to grace the wedding, and no congratulations to the young bridal pair were more sincere than those uttered by Rufus.
At the wedding breakfast, while Neva, fair and proud, and radiant as a star, sat beside her equally radiant young bridegroom, Rufus Black found opportunity to speak a word privately to the bride.
“It has all ended as it ought to, Miss Neva—my lady, I mean,” he whispered joyously. “Your father has got over his disappointment and grief, and looks like a king, as he stands yonder. I am getting to be a man—an honest, upright, strong-souled man, with genuine backbone and downright vim. Lally believes in me, you see, and upholds me, God bless her. And you and the earl are as happy as angels, Miss Ne—my lady, and you deserve to be. Mrs. Artress is a governess—where do you think—oh, divine justice—in the house of the Blights at Canterbury! What worse could we wish her? Our enemies—they were mine as well as yours, Lady Towyn—played a daring game, and they lost it!”
THE END.
No. 233 of the Select Library, is the first volume of “The Three Musketeers,” by Alexandre Dumas.
A Big Step
forward in quality is the reason for the unprecedented strides in popularity that the S. & S. novels are making.
The demand has been greater than the supply, the latter having been somewhat restricted on account of war conditions. We are running our presses night and day turning out “good ones” for the consumption of men and women who want good reading matter and who have got to get it at a modest price.