Just then Phillis and Jack burst into the room. They did not look at all like being ruined; they were wild with joy and good spirits.
"And you are going to Virginia, Mr. Dunquerque?" said Gilead. "I am thinking of going, too, if I can persuade this lady to go with me."
"O Agatha! come with us!"
"Come with me," corrected Gilead.
Then Phillis saw how things lay—what a change in Phillis, to see so much?—and half laughing, but more in seriousness than in mirth, threw her arms round Agatha's neck.
"Will you come, dear Agatha? He is a good man, and he loves you; and we will all live near together and be happy."
Three short scenes to conclude my story.
It is little more than a year since Agatha L'Estrange, as shy and blushing as any maiden—much more shy than Phillis—laid her hand in Gilead's, with the confession, half sobbed out, "And it isn't a mistake you are making, because I am not ruined at all. It is only you and these poor children and Lawrence."
We are back again to Empire City. It is the early fall, September. The yellow leaves clothe all the forests with brown and gold; the sunlight strikes upon the peaks and ridges of the great Sierra, lights up the broad belt of wood making shadows blacker than night, and lies along the grass grown streets of the deserted Empire City. Two men in hunting-dress are making their way slowly through the grass and weeds that choke the pathway.
"Don't like it, Colquhoun," says one; "more ghostly than ever."