In that manner, and in no other, Madeline rose from the grave.

When the first shock of meeting was over, and calmer speech was possible, Forster told his wife of the duel on Boulogne sands and the death of her persecutor at the hands of Edgar Sutherland; thus assuring her that, whether the marriage with Gavrolles was real or a delusion, she was then a free woman. She listened sadly, and seemed little comforted, until Forster assured her of his intention, with her consent, to quit England, and seek some country where the story of their sorrows was unknown, and where the viperous journal of the period has not yet begun to crawl. Then she again laid her head upon his breast, and promised to go with him, anywhere out of the old world of scandal, cruelty, and shame.

So she lived, who had died. By her own lips the mystery of her resurrection was explained. She told him how, while flying in despair, she had encountered the poor waif of the streets, and in some wild impulse of dread, fearing pursuit, and wishing to destroy all traces of identity, she had taken the shawl from her shoulders, bracelets from her wrists, and given them to her outcast sister. The rest was clear. Mad with drink and misery, the outcast must have yielded to death’s fascination, and cast herself away into the river—whence, long afterwards, her disfigured body was taken to be identified by Forster and buried, as the reader is aware.

Madeline lived again. She still lives, but far away from the scene of her martyrdom. Sometimes in the course of his wanderings (for he is still a wanderer and unmarried) Edgar Sutherland visits a pleasant home on the bank of a great American river, where a happy wife and husband are growing old together among their children. There he is ever an honoured guest, certain of having attentive auditors while he discourses, more garrulously as years creep on, on his pet theme—the purification of manhood and the regeneration of woman............