"No," she answered, "I have been mad, but, thank God I have come to my senses at last. I destroyed the will because I had wronged Howard enough already without taking his inheritance from him. I have confessed my faults to him and he has forgiven everything."
"And the long vendetta is over," said Mrs. Egerton. "Henceforth you will be——" she paused for a suitable word.
"Xenie will be my wife," said Howard Templeton, drawing near.
Mrs. Carroll, who had been silent all this while, drew near and took her daughter for one moment into the tender clasp of her maternal arms.
"God bless you, my daughter," she murmured. "You have known deep sorrow—may your future years be very happy ones."
My readers, we close our story as we began it—with a wedding. But this time the wedding bells indeed are "golden bells," ringing out the mellow chimes of true happiness.
For this is not the union of winter and summer, this is not the sordid barter of youth and beauty for an old man's gold. It is that one true and beautiful union upon earth where the solemn vow of marriage welds eternally together
"Two souls with but a single thought,
Two hearts that beat as one."
[THE END.]