To how many has it not seemed, at some one
period of their lives, that all was over for them, and that to them
in their afflictions there was nothing left but to die! And yet they
have lived to laugh again, to feel that the air was warm and the
earth fair, and that God in giving them ever-springing hope had given
everything. How many a sun may seem to set on an endless night, and
yet rising again on some morrow--

"He tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky!"

For Lady Mason let us hope that the day will come in which she also
may once again trick her beams in some modest, unassuming way, and
that for her the morning may even yet be sweet with a glad warmth.
For us, here in these pages, it must be sufficient to say this last
kindly farewell.

As to Lucius Mason and the arrangement of his affairs with his
step-brother a very few concluding words will suffice. When Joseph
Mason left the office of Messrs. Round and Crook he would gladly
have sacrificed all hope of any eventual pecuniary benefit from
the possession of Orley Farm could he by doing so have secured
the condign punishment of her who had so long kept him out of his
inheritance. But he soon found that he had no means of doing this.
In the first place he did not know where to turn for advice. He had
quarrelled absolutely with Dockwrath, and though he now greatly
distrusted the Rounds, he by no means put implicit trust in him of
Hamworth. Of the Rounds he suspected that they were engaged to serve
his enemy, of Dockwrath he felt sure that he was anxious only to
serve himself. Under these circumstances he was driven into the arms
of a third attorney, and learned from him, after a delay that cut
him to the soul, that he could take no further criminal proceeding
against Lady Mason. It would be impossible to have her even indicted
for the forgery,--seeing that two juries, at the interval of twenty
years, had virtually acquitted her,--unless new evidence which should
be absolute and positive in its kind should be forthcoming. But there
was no new evidence of any kind. The offer made to surrender the
property was no evidence for a jury whatever it might be in the mind
of the world at large.

"And what am I to do?" asked Mason.

"Take the goods the gods provide you," said the attorney. "Accept the
offer which your half-brother has very generously made you."

"Generously!" shouted Mason of Groby.

"Well, on