"I never, never will return, unless you take me back!" she said, raising her head, but not daring to raise her quivering glance.
"Éloise! Éloise! Do you know what you say?"
She ventured just a glimpse at the dark eyes above her, glowing and glooming, smiles breaking out of their pain, and then with a little blind motion the tender face was hidden in his breast.
Just there a cloud peeled off the sun and went all radiant upon its way, the silent birds fell into one deep chorus, the locust shot out its great whirring lance of jubilant sound, the whole forest grew astir and alive over the glad secret it had learned.
The sun was setting, when Mr. St. George, leading his horse, on whose back Éloise was throned, and followed by Hazel and Vane, came into view of the wondering, waiting, indignant party on the piazza. The party, fickle as any mob, be it patrician or plebeian, was easily appeased with such quarry as it found, and changed itself straightway with acclaim into a bridal party. That night St. George brought in and tried upon the third finger of the white left-hand a narrow glittering band.
"Nothing but a wedding-fetter?" he asked. "Yet capable of great things, that fetter! It holds the famous elixir which sinks two identities in one; it is the visible sign of a sacrament; it is to be the type of our souls' union, pure, perfect, and without end"——
But here, perhaps, the eyes of Éloise silenced him, perhaps the mouth. And when life settled in its new channel at The Rim, Éloise, wearing at last her father's name, sat at the head of her husband's table, and Mrs. Earl St. George Erne herself entertained her guests. They lingered a little while, with the disinclination that any group finds to separate, and circumstances had knitted a bond among them all. And then, when deepening summer ended the renewed cheer, Mrs. Arles put on her widow's-cap once more, her little foot went into obscurity, and the gold and ebony riding-whip hung reclaimed above her mantel.