The marriage of Everard Lisle and Ethel Thursby Clare did not take place till the following April.

Sir Gilbert, his son, his granddaughter and Lady Pell spent the winter in the South of France, where they were joined in February by Everard on his return from Pineapple City, whither he had gone at John Clare\'s request (for Sir Gilbert strongly objected to his son\'s going in person) to wind up his affairs, which had been looked after during the past few months by a trusted subordinate, and to dispose of the business.

But it now becomes requisite to go back a little, for many things had happened before Sir Gilbert and the others got back to the Chase.

The first to whom our attention is due are the dear twin-sisters of Rose Mount.

On the morning of the day following that scene at the Chase when Sir Gilbert had unconditionally sanctioned the engagement of his granddaughter to Everard Lisle, Ethel asked her father whether he had any objection to her writing to her "aunts" at Mapleford and informing them of all the wonderful things which had befallen her in the course of the last four-and-twenty hours.

Not only had John Clare no objection to the sisters being informed, but he suggested that instead of Ethel writing to them, Everard Lisle should be sent to them as a special envoy, not only to tell them the news, but to bring them back, vi et armis, on a long visit to the Chase.

It was a task which Everard accomplished to the satisfaction of everyone concerned. Of the meeting between Ethel and the sisters, when at length the latter had been persuaded into accepting Sir Gilbert\'s hospitality, and of the genuine welcome accorded them, we have not space left to speak. It will be enough to say that, a little later, at Sir Gilbert\'s earnest persuasion, they agreed to leave Rose Mount and St. Oswyth\'s and make their future home at Maylings (of which they were to become the tenants at a nominal rent), where they would be next door, as one might say, to their "dear girl." That Tamsin should accompany them to their new home was a foregone conclusion; indeed, it would not have seemed like home without her.

John Clare\'s Christmas present to the sisters, to whom he felt himself so deeply indebted, took the form of a pony and basket carriage. It was a luxury which they had denied themselves ever since the break in their fortunes, but with Vale View House let on a seven years\' lease the need for their doing so no longer existed.

In the course of the winter Mrs. Tew was married, the man of her choice being none other than Dr. Mallory, the most popular of the Mapleford medicos. As Lady Pell said, the affair was quite a little romance. It appeared that the canon\'s widow and the doctor had been in love with each other thirty years before when they were young folk living in quite a different part of the country. As is often the case, something had happened to separate them, and for a quarter of a century or more they had wholly lost touch of each other; so much so that for aught either of them knew the other might be dead. Chance, or accident, one day brought them together, and to their mutual surprise they discovered that the ashes on the altar of their early love which they had believed to be long extinct, still smouldered, and needed nothing but propinquity and favouring circumstances to fan them into a flame which one might pretty safely assume would expire only with life itself.

If the canon\'s widow believed--which she did firmly--that Dr. Mallory had lived unmarried all these years because he had never got over his early disappointment, it was a charming belief, and certainly the doctor himself would have been the last man to undeceive her.

Little now remains to be done save to furnish the reader with a few brief particulars of the after fortunes of sundry of the characters with one or more episodes of whose life-history the foregoing pages have been concerned.

First, then, as regards the Keymers, father and son.

With Launce Keymer it was the case of the trickster being tricked. Always on the lookout for a woman with money, he met and was introduced to a widow, still young and pretty, whose husband had died two years before, leaving her a fortune of twenty-five thousand pounds. After having obtained a copy of the late Mr. Witley\'s will from Somerset House, and so satisfied himself as to the genuineness of the bequest, Keymer proposed and was accepted. Not till after his marriage did he discover that nearly the whole of his wife\'s fortune had been swallowed up in a huge banking failure which had occurred only a few weeks prior to his introduction to her. So extreme was his disgust and disappointment that, after having scraped together every shilling he could lay hands on, he quietly levanted, presumably to the land of the stars and stripes, and his newly married wife saw him no more.

Of Mr. Keymer, senior, it is enough to state that, partly as a consequence of his second wife\'s extravagance, which he was morally too weak to curb; partly owing to a growing neglect of his business, combined with, or the result of, an increasing fondness for the cup which, whether it cheers or no, does............