Mr. James Baron is one of those fair-haired, blue-eyed young Saxons who seem all to have been cast in the same mould, and of whom there is little or nothing to be said. But he is Miriam's choice, and Miriam loves him, and that is enough.
The services rendered Ambrose Murray by Peter Byrne and his daughter have been most liberally rewarded. But, in addition to this, some old mining shares which Byrne had long looked upon as utterly worthless have--to use his own phrase--"turned up trumps" at last, and the old poverty-stricken days in Amelia Terrace are at an end for ever. Through Gerald's influence, a capital situation has been found for young Baron with a large wine firm at Bordeaux, so they are all keeping holiday together for a little while before the young couple set out for their new home.
"Papa," says Miriam with a smile, "if anyone had told you, three months ago, that you would be walking here with James and me, that you would call James 'my dear boy' a hundred times a day, and that you would have actually given me away--with your blessing--to the man whose name you could not bear to hear me mention, what would you have said?"
"I should have recommended the immediate application of a strait waistcoat. But circumstances alter cases, as we have all lived to prove, and it's only your narrow-minded people who will never admit that they are in the wrong."
"Do you remember how shocked you were when I told you to what use I should put Mr. Warburton's money if it ever came into my hands?"
"Ah, my dear, you never really understood the secret of my opposition to your little love affair. James, here, has a great deal to thank me for. I knew your disposition, dear, better than you knew it yourself. I knew that if your courtship were allowed to go on in a quiet, conventional, hum-drum sort of way, without any parental opposition to infuse a spice of romance and difficulty into the affair, you would never learn to care quite so much for James, or to value him so highly as you would do if your wishes were judiciously thwarted for a time. You like your husband all the better because you have had a difficulty in making him your husband. It is a sort of weakness by no means uncommon with your sex. As I said before, James has much to thank me for."
Mr. Baron and his wife both burst into laughter.
"Trust papa for never being without an excuse!" says Miriam.
The scene changes. The accident ward in a London hospital. Time, eight p.m.
On a pallet in one corner of the ward, between which and the long row of other pallets stands a big black screen, lies all that remains of Jonas Pringle. He has breathed his last but a few minutes ago. Kneeling on the floor, her face buried in her hands, is the dead man's daughter. Run over in the streets when drunk, he has been brought here early in the afternoon. He is just able to tell his daughter's address, and then he lapses into unconsciousness. He never opens his eyes or speaks again, but with his daughter's hand clasped in his, he sleeps himself away as gently as though he were a little child hushed on its mother's breast.