to laugh or
cry, when, grasping it, he leaped to his feet and in tones of a most
limitless, a most unutterable relief, shouted three times running
"_Gott sei Dank_!"

CONCLUSION

So that was the end of Priscilla's fortnight,--according to the way
you look at it glorious or inglorious. I shall not say which I think
it was; whether it is better to marry a prince, become in course of
time a queen, be at the head of a great nation, be surfeited with
honour, wealth, power and magnificence till the day when Death with
calm, indifferent fingers strips everything away and leaves you at
last to the meek simplicity of a shroud; or whether toilsome paths,
stern resistances, buffetings bravely taken, battles fought inch by
inch, an ideal desperately clung to even though in clinging you are
slain, is not rather the part to be chosen of him whose soul would sit
attired with stars. Anyhow the goddess laughed, the goddess who had
left Priscilla in the lurch, when she heard the end of the adventure;
and her unpleasant sister, having nothing more to do in Creeper
Cottage, gathered up her rags and grinned too as she left it. At least
her claws had lacerated much over-tender flesh during her stay; and
though the Prince had interrupted the operation and forced her for the
moment to inactivity, she was not dissatisfied with what had been
accomplished.

Priscilla, it will readily be imagined, made no farewell calls. She
disappeared from Symford as suddenly as she had appeared; and Mrs.
Morrison, coming into Creeper Cottage on Monday afternoon to unload
her conscience yet more, found only a pleasant gentleman, a stranger
of mellifluous manners, writing out cheques. She had ten minutes talk
with him, and went home very sad and wise. Indeed from that day, her
spirit being the spirit of the true snob, the hectorer of the humble,
the devout groveller in the courtyards of the great, she was a
much-changed woman. Even her hair felt it, and settled down unchecked
to greyness. She no longer cared to put on a pink tulle bow in the
afternoons, which may or may not be a sign of grace. She ceased to
suppose that she was pretty. When the accounts of Priscilla's wedding
filled all the papers she became so ill that she had to go to bed and
be nursed. Sometimes to the vicar's mild surprise she hesitated before
expressing an opinion. Once at least she of her own accord said
she had been wrong. And although she never told any one of the
conversati