Falkner left them; and they instinctively, so to prevent interruption, took their way into a woody glade of the park; and as they walked beneath the shadows of some beautiful lime-trees, on the crisp green turf, disclosed to each other every inner thought and feeling. Neville declared his resolve not to separate her from her benefactor. "If the world censure me," he said, "I am content; I am accustomed to its judgments, and never found them sway or annoy me. I do right for my own heart. It is a godlike task to reward the penitent. In religion and morality, I know that I am justified; whether I am in the code of worldly honour, I leave others to decide; and yet I believe that I am. I had once thought to have met Falkner in a duel, but my father's vengeance prevented that. He is now acquitted before all the world of being more than the accidental cause of my dear mother's death. Knights of old, after they fought in right good earnest, became friends, each finding, in the bravery of the other, a cause for esteem. Such is the situation of Rupert Falkner and myself; and we will both join, dear Elizabeth, in making him forget the past, and rendering his future years calm and happy."
Elizabeth could only look her gratitude. She felt, as was most true, that this was not a cause for words or reason. Falkner in himself offered, or did not offer, full excuse for the generosity of Neville. No one could see him, and not allow that the affectionate, duteous son in no way derogated from his reverence for his mother's memory, by entirely forgiving him who honoured her as an earthly angel, and had deplored, through years of unutterable anguish, the mortal injury done her. Satisfied in his own mind that he acted rightly, Neville did not seek for any other approval; and yet he gladly accepted it from Elizabeth, whose heart, touched to its very core by his nobleness, felt an almost painful weight of gratitude and love; she tried to express it: fortunately, between lovers mere language is not necessary ineffectually to utter that which transcends all expression. Neville felt himself most sweetly thanked; a more happy pair never trod this lovely earth than the two that, closely linked hand in hand, and with hearts open and true as the sunlight about them, enjoyed the sweetest hour of love, the first of acknowledged perpetual union, beneath the majestic, deep-shadowing thickets of Belleforest.
All that had seemed so difficult now took its course easily. They did not any of them seek to account for or to justify the course they took. They each knew that they could not do other than they did. Elizabeth could not break faith with Falkner—Neville could not renounce her; it might be strange—but it must be so; they three must remain together through life, despite all of tragic and miserable that seemed to separate them.
Even Lady Cecil admitted that there was no choice. Elizabeth must be won—she was too dear a treasure to be voluntarily renounced. In a few weeks, the wedding-day of Sir Gerard Neville and Miss Raby being fixed, she joined them at Belleforest, and saw, with genuine pleasure, the happiness of the two persons whom she esteemed and loved most in the world, secured. Mrs. Raby's warm heart reaped its own reward in witnessing this felicitous conclusion of her interference.
Whether the reader of this eventful tale will coincide with every other person, fully in the confidence of all, in the opinion that such was the necessary termination of a position full of difficulty, is hard to say—but so it was; and it is most certain that no woman who ever saw Rupert Falkner but thought Neville just and judicious; and if any man disputed this point, when he saw Elizabeth he was an immediate convert.
As much happiness as any one can enjoy, whose inner mind bears the unhealing wound of a culpable act, fell to the portion of Falkner. He had repented; and was forgiven, we may believe, in heaven, as well as on earth. He could not forgive himself—and this one shadow remained upon his lot—it could not be got rid of; yet perhaps in the gratitude he felt to those about him, in the softened tenderness inspired by the sense that he was dealt with more leniently than he believed that he deserved, he found full compensation for the memories that made him feel himself a perpetual mourner beside Alithea's grave.
Neville and Elizabeth had no drawback to their felicity. They cared not for the world, and when they did enter it, the merits of both commanded respect and liking; they were happy in each other, happy in a growing family, happy in Falkner; whom, as Neville had said, it was impossible to regard with lukewarm sentiments; and they derived a large store of happiness from his enlightened mind, from the elevated tone of moral feeling, which was the result of his sufferings, and from the deep affection with which he regarded them both. They were happy also in the wealth which gave scope to the benevolence of their dispositions, and in the talents that guided them rightly through the devious maze of life. They often visited Dromore, but their chief time was spent at their seat in Bucks, near which Falkner had purchased a villa. He lived in retirement: he grew a sage amid his books and his own reflections. But his heart was true to itself to the end, and his pleasures were derived from the society of his beloved Elizabeth, of Neville, who was scarcely less dear, and their beautiful children. Surrounded by these, he felt no want of the nearest ties; they were to him as his own. Time passed lightly on, bringing no apparent change; thus they still live—and Neville has never for a moment repented the irresistible impulse that led him to become the friend of him whose act had rendered his childhood miserable, but who completed the happiness of his maturer years.
THE END