is pity?--they have told you that I--in short, you are
generous--you--you--Oh, deceive me not! Do you love her still?--Can
you--do you love the humble, foolish Fanny?"

"As God shall judge me, sweet one, I am sincere! I have survived a
passion--never so deep, so tender, so entire as that I now feel for you!
And, oh, Fanny, hear this true confession. It was you--you to whom my
heart turned before I saw Camilla!--against that impulse I struggled in
the blindness of a haughty error!"

Fanny uttered a low and suppressed cry of delight and rapture. Philip
passionately continued,--

"Fanny, make blessed the life you have saved. Fate destined us for
each other. Fate for me has ripened your sweet mind. Fate for you has
softened this rugged heart. We may have yet much to bear and much to
learn. We will console and teach each other!"

He drew her to his breast as he spoke--drew her trembling, blushing,
confused, but no more reluctant; and there, by the GRAVE that had been
so memorable a scene in their common history, were murmured those
vows in which all this world knows of human happiness is treasured and
recorded--love that takes the sting from grief, and faith that gives
eternity to love. All silent, yet all serene around them! Above, the
heaven,--at their feet, the grave:--For the love, the grave!--for the
faith, the heaven!

CHAPTER THE LAST.

"A labore reclinat otium."--HORAT.

[Leisure unbends itself from labour.]

I feel that there is some justice in the affection the general reader
entertains for the old-fashioned and now somewhat obsolete custom, of
giving to him, at the close of a work, the latest news of those who
sought his acquaintance through its progress.

The weak but well-meaning Smith, no more oppressed by the evil
influence of his brother, has continued to pass his days in comfort and
respectability on the income settled on him by Philip Beaufort. Mr. and
Mrs. Roger Morton still live, and have just resigned their business to
their eldest son; retiring themselves to a small villa adjoining the
town in which they had made their fortune. Mrs. Morton is very apt, when
she goes out to tea, to talk of her dear deceased sister-in-law, the
late Mrs. Beaufort, and of her own remarkable kindness to her nephew
when a little boy. She observes that, in fact, the young men owe
everything to Mr. Roger and herself; and, indeed, though Sidney was
never of a grateful disposition, and has not bee