'How strange it is that you never discovered me!' said Laura; 'yet I have seen your eyes wander more than once to this engagement ring.'
'And stranger still that when I heard you sing the old, old song that was once so familiar, making my heart thrill with troubled memories, no light came to me. Oh, Laura, you acted well your part to this joyous ending.'
'I told you that I had found the verses in an old album, where a friend wrote them years ago; that friend was yourself. You remember so lately telling me that I had ruined your life?'
'Yes, Laura, and your cruel smile.'
'God knows how at that moment I longed to cast myself on your breast, Anthony, as I do now, and barter all my past wrongs for a single kiss!'
His Christian name again on her lips, as in the days of their boy and girl love, ere the black change came, and how strange, yet familiar—how sweet, how dear it sounded!
'How did you learn I was here with Goring?' he asked, tenderly.
'I learned it at the transport.'
'My darling—my darling, why have you kept all this secret so long—the secret that you were my own?'
'As I told you, I would never be more to you than I am now, were I to live a hundred years, and was I not right?'