"Nonsense. You would have been foolish not to have taken advantage of the opportunity that God made for you especially. I congratulate you both with all my heart. I have never had anything make me happier, and I am sure all the rest of the family will join me."
There is little remaining to be told.
Luis Kingsley was not prosecuted for the felonious concealment of a will. He was released from prison, and shortly after disappeared from the country. No one knew where he went, and presumably no one cared enough to inquire. He was as utterly dead to Lynde and Leonie as though the grave were between them.
Ben Mauprat was sentenced to two years in the penitentiary for assault with intent to kill, with a charge of complicity in a robbery hanging over his head upon his release. But the chances are that he will never be prosecuted upon that charge.
Leonie entered her claim to the estate simply to prove the legality of her mother's marriage, and won the case, against the man who was to become her husband shortly afterward.
It occasioned considerable merriment among Lynde's friends, but there were none of them who did not envy him the "romance of the thing," as they termed it.
They are very happy, Lynde and Leonie. They are regular visitors at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Chandler, where Leonie is petted and made much of, while the home of the Pryors will be hers until after her nuptials shall have been celebrated.
And so the story ends as does all life, with the reward of virtue and the punishment of vice.
"Every man's life is a fairy-tale written by God's fingers."