ance of his whilom
friend in impenetrable veils of mystery. He was a humane and a kindly
man and feeling that the guilty had been amply punished, he set to work
to cheer and to rehabilitate the innocent.

All of us who have read the memoirs of Editha de Chavasse, written when
she was a woman of nearly sixty, remember that she, too, has drawn a
thick curtain over the latter days of her brother-in-law's life. It is
to her pen that we owe the record of what happened subsequently.

She tells us, for instance, how Master Skyffington, after sundry
interviews with my Lord Northallerton, had the honor of bringing to his
lordship's notice the young student--so long known as Richard
Lambert--who, of a truth, was sole heir to the earldom and to its
magnificent possessions and dependencies.

From the memoirs of Editha de Chavasse we also know that Lady Sue
Aldmarshe, girl-wife and widow, did, after a period of mourning, marry
Michael Richard de Chavasse, sole surviving nephew and heir presumptive
of his lordship the Earl of Northallerton.

But it is to the brush of Sir Peter Lely that we owe that exquisite
portrait of Sue, when she was Countess of Northallerton, the friend of
Queen Catherine, the acknowledged beauty at the Court of the
Restoration.

It is a sweet face, whereon the half-obliterated lines of sorrow vie
with that look of supreme happiness which first crept into her eyes when
she realized that the dear and constant friend who had loved her so
dearly, was as true to her in his joy as he had been in those dark days
when a terrible crisis had well-nigh wrecked her life.

Lord and Lady Northallerton did not often stay in London. The brilliance
of the Court had few attractions for them. Happiness came to them after
terrible sorrows. They liked to hide it and their great love in the calm
and mystery of forest-covered Thanet.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Nest of the Sparrowhawk, by Baroness Orczy

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