Conclusion.

To-day I am seated in the long old library at Wichenford where, at the big writing-table set in the deep window, I have spent so many hours putting down in black and white this curious chronicle of the evil that men do. The last blank folios lie before me.

What more need I tell you?

To describe the perfect happiness that now is mine would require still another volume. Ella—my own sweet Ella who was so nearly lost to me—became my wife a little over a year ago. She is seated in a long wicker chair at my side, while the summer sunset falling through the high old diamond-panes shines upon her fresh open countenance and tints her beautiful hair with gold.

It is the evening of a calm day, and a similar tranquillity seems to have fallen upon our lives, for a great peace has come to us in this stately old place that everywhere speaks mutely of the dignity of the Murrays.

Delightful indeed it is to be back again in England and no longer a wanderer, for Mr Murray has given over Wichenford to us for our home, and he in his turn is travelling in the Far East.

Of Dr Gavazzi we heard news not long ago. He is in Vienna, living, we suppose, upon his share of that money taken from his master’s secret hiding-place, while Himes, having returned to America, was, we saw in the papers, two months ago sentenced in New York to three years with hard labour for stealing a dressing-bag from a lady while travelling on the “Chicago Limited.”

A week after the death of Gordon-Wright and that eventful meeting at Granville Gardens when the enigma was solved, Lucie discovered in an old kit-bag of her father’s, at Studland, the packets of bank-notes obtained from the Villa Verde, and, suspecting them to be the proceeds of some robbery, she brought them to me. I suggested that as the money was not hers she should devote the whole of it to cha............