After the manner of the old fairy-tale we may here say good-bye to little Betty and the prince, who, though in nineteenth-century garb, had after orthodox fashion broken the long captivity not only of his lady-love but of those about her.
But there is more to tell.
There came a day on which Mr Ryder Morion’s allusion to other vague possibilities was explained to Frances, and that not in vain.
“Though there is one confession I feel it due to you to make,” she said to him. “It is all so different now—so much, much happier and surer and more restful—that I can scarcely believe I was ever so foolish! But—Ryder—there was a time that I thought I cared for some one else, and, worse still, that he cared for me!”
The smile with which this avowal was received was more than reassuring.
“Worse still?” he repeated; “no, as to that I can’t agree with you—not as far as I am concerned. Perhaps I knew or suspected more than you had any idea of. Perhaps you were not alone in your suspicion, deepened in my case into fear, that the ‘some one’ did care for you! And the relief was great when I found my mistake. But it would have been worse had your feelings been involved as you may have imagined they were.”
“And as I now know so certainly they were not,” said Frances happily. “You see, I was so inexperienced in such things, though not young.”
“Not young! When my greatest misgiving has been that I was far, far too old for you,” he answered. “For there was a time when I thought I should never again care for any woman—I was scarcely more than a boy and she still younger when I lost her. Some day I will tell you more; there is nothing painful in it to me now, and her short life was very happy.” And as Frances looked at him she thought indeed that it could scarcely have been otherwise.
The rôle of “great lady” was not what she had ever dreamt of for herself, not, assuredly, what she would have chosen; but she fulfilled it well, bringing to bear upon its difficulties and responsibilities—its temptations even—the same single-minded sincerity of purpose which is, in all conditions in life, the best armour for man or woman.
Even Mrs Conrad Littlewood came by degrees to own that no better châtelaine could have been selected to do honour to the glories of Witham-Meldon, and to dispense its generous bounties in all right directions.