berty; the latter offers, in my judgment, the most favorable
opportunity for the former. Jenny likes liberty--so do I. As we are, we
can both enjoy it. If by any miraculous freak Jenny had made me her
husband, she would have made me her slave also. Or would Jenny have been
the slave? I fancy not. I know her--and myself--too well to cherish that
idea; which is indeed, in the end, little more attractive.

For her decision is right for herself, as once I told her. She has found
happiness--more happiness than would have come to her if she had never
fled from Hatcham Ford, more happiness, I dare to think (though never to
say!), than would in the end have been hers, had Octon never faced the
Frenchman's pistol at Tours. She is not made for an equal partnership,
no more than for a submission or surrender. How hardly she accepted a
partnership at all, even with the man whose love has altered all her
life! It is her nature to be alone, and through a sore ordeal she came
to that discovery. Once, I think, and in just one sentence she showed me
her true heart, what her true and deepest instinct was--even about
Leonard Octon.

We were sitting by the fire one evening alone. Talk dragged and she
looked listless, tired after a busy day's work, thoughtful and brooding.

"What are you thinking of?" I asked.

"Oh, my thoughts had gone back to the early days here. I was thinking
how pleasant it would be if we had Leonard back at Hatcham Ford,
dropping in after dinner."

At Hatcham Ford, mind you! Dropping in after dinner! That was the time
to which her wandering thoughts flew back--that the point on which their
flight instinctively alighted. Not the heart-trying, heart-testing,
perhaps heart-breaking, days of union and partnership, but the days of
liberty and friendship.

I must have smiled to myself over her answer, for she said sadly, yet
with a smile herself, "I can't help it! That was what I was thinking,
Austin."

So think, dear mistress--and not on the harder days! Defiance, doubt,
despair, are over. Abide in peace.

THE END

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