the world if
necessary."

"But have you considered everything--your father--your friends--the
uncertain future?"

"I've weighed everything. I knew that I loved you all along. I struggled
with my pride, and I've mastered it. My father will forgive me when he
knows that I am happy. As to what society thinks, I don't care."

"But are you willing to marry a poor man--are you willing to sacrifice
all the luxuries you now enjoy for what may be a precarious existence
with me?"

She looked up at him, her face radiant.

"I'd give up everything for you. Wealth does not bring happiness. I've
found that out. I did not know what happiness was until I spent those
blissful days with you on Hope Island. I'll welcome poverty if I am to
share it with you. We can live in a cottage, on nothing a year, and I'll
still be the happiest woman on earth."

He clasped her in his strong arms and fiercely kissed her unresisting
lips. Here was a woman that any man might rejoice to call wife, and he
had won her by love alone.

"It isn't as bad as all that, dearest," he said, with a smile.

"What do you mean?" she demanded, puzzled.

"There is no immediate danger of your having to live any differently."

Grace opened her eyes in amazement.

"What do you mean?" she repeated. "My father may be so incensed that he
won't give me anything."

Armitage smiled.

"We wouldn't take it if he did. We wouldn't need to. I have plenty of my
own."

Grace was more and more mystified.

"Are you jesting?" she exclaimed.

"Not in the least. Didn't I tell you there had been a change for the
better in my fortunes?"

"Yes, but----"

Taking fondly once more in his arms the girl he had won, he whispered:

"That's why I--that's why we--are going to England, dearest. My father,
Sir William Armitage, died three weeks ago. I am heir to the title and
estates."

"I always thought you were more than you seemed," she murmured. Looking
up at him mischievously, she added: "So you deceived me-- I marry a
title, after all?"

He looked down proudly at her as he replied with his frank smile:

"But I wooed you as a poor man. You are mine--by right of conquest!"

THE END.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY OF

THE END OF THE GAME

BY ARTHUR HORNBLOW

* * * * *

THE LITERARY DIGEST

"'The End of the Game' belongs to the school of good old-fashioned
fiction which delighted the scant leisure hours of our
grandmothers.