“Did you never see her again?”
“Never. I left Paris considerably wiser than I had entered it and avoided society generally. I had one year's life in London, and was considered no end of a catch by the mammas, I believe, but you can imagine I did not easily fall a victim. No. That is all my story, my dear, all at least that has been unguessed at by you. My health was very bad at home and beyond my love of sport I cared for nothing. I grew to hate my life in England, even England, though she had done me no harm. Finally, I quarrelled with my father who married again, a woman we both disliked, Joseph and I, and so we turned our backs on the Old World and came out to Canada and to—you.”
Mildred still lay, crying softly, in her husband's arms. “I had sometimes dreamt,” continued Mr. Foxley, “of meeting some young girl who could love me and on whose innocence and sweetness I could rest and whom besides I should really love. It did not dawn upon me when I first saw you, that you were the one I wanted, for we must confess, dear, that you were very plump and rather pink and spoke—”
“Why, Dacre, how can you? I was only fifteen! Cruel!”
“Yes, I know. And how you changed! Now, you are so different that it is not the same Mildred at all. Such is the power of a true love, my child, and we must always be happy,—ours is one of those marriages.”
Theirs was indeed one of those marriages. Mr. Foxley took to farming and enriched his purse as well as his health. Mr. Joseph had an interview with Miss Dexter the nature of which I am not going to reveal, but which resulted in a placid intimacy between the two to the surprise of all save Milly who always said that “she thought she knew why.” Miss Dexter frequently accompanied blind Mr. Joseph on his lonely walks or would sit with him when the others were out, as none but he cared to meet her. Towards his death which occurred in about four years time, she was with him constantly, and died herself in a fortnight after, having left in her will, all her maiden belongings to her “good friend, Farmer Wise.” The farmer was not much moved when informed of this fact, so incomprehensible to the rest of the village. He had always kept the little bottle with its cruel label, and had always feared and avoided poor, proud, foolish, wicked Charlotte Dexter since that Saturday night.
As for Mr. George and his wife, I see a vision of a successful and happy husband and father in the prime of early old age (which means, that at fifty-three one is not old with a young wife and three sweet children) and of Mildred, who is always a little pale, has her eyes constantly turned up to her husband's with her lips brushing her shoulder every now and then.
Still?
Ay, still and forever. And so ends my sketch of how the Mr. Foxleys came, stayed and never went away.