Jessie is roused at last by a hand laid gently on her shoulder. She looks up, and sees one of the visiting sisters of mercy. She rises to her feet, and the sister, who has thought she was crying, is surprised to see that her eyes are dry and tearless.
"He was your father," says the sister, with a slight touch of surprise in her voice.
"Yes, he was my father," says Jessie, gently.
Then she asks for a pair of scissors, and having cut off a lock of her father's hair, she wraps it in a piece of paper, and places it inside the bosom of her dress. Then, still with dry and tearless eyes, she kisses the dead man's cold forehead.
"I've got money at home," she says to the sister, who is standing quietly by. "The parish mustn't lay a finger on him. I'll bury him myself."
Then, with a muttered good night, she turns and goes. She stands for a moment at the hospital door, gazing up and down, the rainy, lamp-lit street, and shudders as she gazes. Then she draws her scanty shawl more closely round her, and stepping out into the rain, she hurries away--whither?
Again the scene changes. The great drawing-room at Stammars. Time, nine p.m. of a January evening.
It is Miss Sophy's birthday, and there is a large gathering of young people to celebrate the event. There are only five grown-up persons in the room, and all of them are known to us. First and foremost come Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon, looking exactly as they have looked any time these ten years. That thin, dreamy-looking, white-haired gentleman in the corner, with a very tiny young lady on his knee who is resting from her romps for a few minutes, is Mr. Ambrose Murray. That dark, foreign-looking gentleman, and that handsome lady, who are walking through a quadrille with two partners of the mature age of twelve, are Mr. and Mrs. Warburton. They two, together with Mr. Murray, having eaten their Christmas dinner with dear, kind-hearted Miss Bellamy, have come down for a month's visit to Stammars.
Mr. Murray can now bear his own name, and is as free to come and go as any one. Acting on the advice of friends, he went back to the asylum from which he had escaped, and gave himself up. A case was then prepared for the Home Secretary, and that high functionary, having considered the same at his leisure, has been graciously pleased to advise that Ambrose Murray be granted a free pardon, and that the conviction recorded against him be considered null and void.
Eleanor and Gerald have been married three months, and are as happy as they deserve to be. This morning they walked through the lanes and fields, as far as the little churchyard in which Jacob Lloyd sleeps his last. Eleanor always feels as if she must have had two fathers--one in the past and one in the present. With tears in her eyes, she talks to her husband of the dear father who lies here, and she kisses the wreath of everlastings she has brought with her before she lays it gently on his grave.