"And with grateful hearts," added his lordship. "Tell her that. With grateful hearts. They've a way of serving quail in her house, that——" He stopped and sighed.
They have returned to Canaan City; they live in simple sufficiency. His lordship, when he is awake, has many tales to tell of London. His friends believe Stepney Green to be a part of May-fair, and Mrs. Bormalack to be a distinguished though untitled ornament of London society; while as for Aurelia Tucker, who fain would scoff, there are her ladyship's beautiful and costly dresses, and her jewels, and the letters from Lord Jocelyn le Breton and the rich Miss Messenger, and the six hundred dollars a year drawn monthly, which proclaim aloud that there is something in the claim.
There are things which cannot be gainsaid.
Nevertheless, no new discoveries have yet rewarded his lordship's researches.
CHAPTER XLVII. A PALACE OF DELIGHT.
During this time the Palace of Delight was steadily rising. Before Christmas its walls were completed and the roof on. Then began the painting, the decorating, and the fittings. And Angela was told that the building would be handed over to her, complete according to the contract, by the first of March.
The building was hidden away, so to speak, in a corner of vast Stepney, but already rumors were abroad concerning it, and the purpose for which it was erected. They were conflicting rumors. No one knew at all what was intended by it; no one had been within the walls; no one knew who built it. The place was situated so decidedly in the very heart and core of Stepney, that the outside public knew nothing at all about it, and the rumors were confined to the small folk round it. So it rose in their midst without being greatly regarded. No report or mention of it came to Harry's ears, so that he knew nothing of it, and suspected nothing any more than he suspected Miss Kennedy of being some other person.
The first of March in this present year of grace 1882 fell upon a Wednesday. Angela resolved that the opening-day should be on Thursday, the second, and that she would open it herself; and then another thought came into her mind; and the longer she meditated upon it, the stronger hold did the idea take upon her.
The Palace of Delight was not, she said, her own conception; it was that of the man—the man she loved. Would it not be generous, in giving this place over to the people for whom it was built, to give its real founder the one reward which he asked?