So they were married.
Here ought to come "Finis!" yet real life had only begun for them. Were they happy? Yes. For under the wild sweetness of warmest passionate love lay the lasting rock of comprehension and genial companionship. Fuller knowledge brought deeper esteem, and the only secret Katherine ever kept from her husband was the true history of Rachel Trant.
A severe attack of fever, brought on by overstudy, immediately after Katherine's marriage, prevented Bertie Payne from carrying out his missionary scheme. He was reluctantly obliged to put up with the East-End heathen, "who," as Miss Payne observed, "were bad enough to satisfy the largest appetite for sinners."
There his faithful sister established herself to make a home for him, renouncing her comfortable West-End abode, and finding ample interest in the pursuits she affected to treat as fads.
"Altogether everything has turned out in the most extraordinary and unexpected manner," as Mrs. Ormonde observed to Mrs. Needham, whom she encountered at one of Lady Mary Vincent's receptions. "Katherine seems quite proud to settle down in a suburban villa away in St. John's Wood as Mrs. Errington, while she might have made a figure at court as Lady de Burgh. By the way, I see your friend, Mrs. Urquhart, was presented at the last drawing-room."
"Yes, and was one of the handsomest women there.—But I don't suppose Mrs. Errington ever gives a thought to drawing-room or Buckingham Palace balls.—You see she is in a way always at court, for her king is always beside her," returned Mrs. Needham, with a becoming smile. "Good-night, Mrs. Ormonde."