s, about which we marvel in vain?

CHAPTER XXXI.

CONCLUSION.

To-day, Althea is the happy wife of Hubert Lisle and the honored
mistress of Kennons, which is bright and beautiful again with sweet
woman's presence.

Two obstacles to the union of Hubert and Althea had disappeared. She had
been proved to be matrimonially free, and he had become, from study and
conviction, a full believer in her faith, of which he made open
profession. The fact that they were cousins still remained. As there
were considerable delays in the consummation of the marriage, it was
doubtless owing to the smoothing away of this difficulty. And as both
parties hold the Holy Father in most grateful and loving remembrance,
and their most cherished design is to make him a visit at his prison in
the Vatican, it is probable that a dispensation from Rome severed the
last link of obstruction, and permitted Father Ryan, willingly at last,
to tie the Gordion Knot.

Arriving at Kennons, Althea, of course, paid her respects to Mrs. Lisle
at Thornton Hall. She found her in a deplorable situation. A seated
cancer upon the face was eating away her life, as it had already
destroyed every vestige of her former beauty.

She had great difficulty in prevailing upon servants to attend her. She
was so irritable and so offensive that even money could not purchase
aid.

And what did Althea? Sacrificed every ill-feeling, overcame repulsion,
put up with taunts and cross words, and waited on Thornton Rush's mother
as if she had been her own. And this in the happy beginning of her
wedded life with Hubert Lisle. And what reward had she? None in this
life, save the consciousness of having struggled to overcome nature, to
render good for evil, and to perform that loving charity which our
Saviour commended in the Samaritan, and ever inculcates in His Church.

Notwithstanding Althea's patient, persistent efforts, Rusha Lisle,
having hardened her heart, died in her sins.

To Althea, who stood above her dying bed, she whispered hoarsely:

"You have done all this for the sake of my property. I understood all.
You will find out I wasn't fooled up to the last. You couldn't cheat me
with your quiet, gentle ways; ha! ha!" and the wretched woman went out
in the night of death, comprehending not the sweet, Christian life of
such as Althea, but believing all natures dark and cruel as her own. It
was from her own she drew her judgment of another.

She had bequeathed al