To the confusion of Rookleigh, the mystery of the letters was all unfolded now, and when the cheques he had paid Miss Sally Trix came to be known, through Mr. De Murrer, a light was thrown upon his transactions with her, and the use to which he had put her with Clara; thus link after link was found, and the chain of his cruelty and duplicity was complete!
Rookleigh did not wait for the elucidation of all the reader knows. His brother's sudden appearance in the library was more than enough for him; he evacuated Lord Oakhampton's house with all speed, and even quitted London that night, a prey to baffled spite, ambition, and treachery.
"Oh, Derval, Derval," said Clara, as she reclined upon his breast, "may God forgive that man for all he has made me suffer!"
"And me too, darling!"
If Derval's blood boiled at his half-brother's perfidy, it boiled still more when he thought of how a head-wind in the channel or elsewhere might, by delay, have affected the fortune of all who figured in the tableau in Lord Oakhampton's library. But the good ship Amethyst had brought the wind with her, bravely and splendidly had she run, and scarcely sheet or tack were lifted, "for," as Joe Grummet said, "the girls at home were tallying on to the tow-rope."
The document which the lawyer had found among Greville Hampton's papers proved to be nothing less than a will, dated subsequent to one on which they had all acted, and which reversed its terms, for £500 yearly were all that accrued to Rookleigh, while all else he possessed was bequeathed to Derval; so the hand of Nemesis fell heavily on the former.
So the wedding dresses, the wedding cake and breakfast, and the bridesmaids too were all required eventually; but a different bridegroom knelt by Clara's side before the altar rails at St. George's, Hanover Square, while Rookleigh and his amiable mother were left at Finglecombe "to chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy."
Captain Talbot was groomsman, and old Joe Grummet, who with difficulty was restrained from hoisting a flag of the Royal Naval Reserve out of the drawing-room window, as a prelude to the rice and slippers, got disreputably tipsy in the butler's pantry, and pulled all the housemaids about, in the exuberance of his joy, making quite a riot in the servants' hall.
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