And Cynthia--was she changed? He had thought so when he came upon her that afternoon; but his heart had yearned over her all the more fondly for the change. He had never seen her so thin, so pale, so worn; the dark eyes had not been set in such hollows of shadow when he last saw her; the cheeks had never before been so colorless. He felt that she had suffered for him--that she had borne his punishment with himself; and the thought made it difficult for him to restrain himself from falling at her feet and kissing the very hem of her garment as he looked at her.

But at dinner she looked more like her old beautiful self. She was in black when he arrived; but she came to dinner in a pretty gown of cream-colored embroidered muslin, with a bunch of crimson flowers at her bosom. The color had come back to her cheeks too, and the light to her eyes--he saw that, though he could not get her to look at him.

Cynthia sat in the window, not daring to join the party on the piazza--hoping perhaps that one of them would separate himself from the others and come to her. Hubert was walking with her father now--up and down, up and down, deep in talk. Was it merely talk of politics and farming and common things?

She saw them withdraw to a corner of the piazza where they could converse unheard by their companions. Westwood was smoking; but his speech was fluent, Cynthia could see; he was laying down the law, emphasising his sentences by an outstretched finger, blowing great rings of smoke into the air between some of his remarks. Hubert listened and seemed to assent. His head was bowed, his arms were folded across his chest; he looked--Cynthia could not help the thought--like a prisoner receiving sentence, a penitent before his judge. Westwood turned to him at last, as if awaiting an answer--the moonlight was on his face, and showed it to be grave and anxious, but unmistakably kind. Hubert raised his head and made some answer; and then--Cynthia's heart began to beat very fast indeed--her father held out his hand. The two men grasped each other's hands warmly and silently for a moment, then both turned away.

Westwood took out a great red handkerchief and blew his nose vehemently; Hubert leaned for a moment against the balustrade and put his hand across his eyes. Cynthia's own eyes swam in sympathetic tears as she strove to imagine what had been said. In that moment her love for Hubert was almost less than her love for her father--the man who, in spite of lawless instincts, faulty training, great misfortunes and mistakes, had a nature that was large enough and grand enough to know how to forgive.

Her eyes were so blinded with tears that she saw but indistinctly that her father was coming across the piazza to the long open window by which she sat. She drew herself back a little, so as to be out of the range of vision of the Colonel and Mr. MacPhail. She knew that the crisis of her fate was come.

"Cynthia, my dear," said her father's homely ragged voice--how dear it had grown, she felt that she had never known till now--"here's a gentleman wants to have a word with you. And he has my good wishes and my friendship, dearie; and that's a thing that I thought you'd like to know. He calls it my forgiveness; but we know--we understand--it's all the same. I'll leave him with you, my beauty, and you can say to each other what you please." And then he kissed her very tenderly and turned away.

She felt that Hubert had followed him, and had stepped into the room; but she could not raise her eyes.

She was obliged to see him however when he knelt down before her, and put his clasped hands very gently upon her knee.

"Cynthia," said his voice--the other voice that she loved to hear--"your father says that he has forgiven me. Can you forgive?"

She put her hand upon his, and a great tear fell down her cheeks.

"I have nothing to urge in my defence," he said. "If you like to punish me--to send me away from you for ever--I know that I shall have deserved my fate. I dare not ask for anything from you, Cynthia, except your forgiveness. May I hope to gain that?"

"If my father has forgiven you," she said a little hurriedly, "I cannot do less."

There was a little silence. He bowed his head and touched with his lips the slender fingers that rested lightly upon his own joined hands. He felt that she trembled at the touch.

"What is to be my fate, Cynthia? I put my life into your hands. I owe it to your father and to you."

"What do you want it to be?" she asked softly, but with an effort of which he was profoundly conscious and ashamed.

"Oh, my love, my only love, you know what I desire!" he said, with sudden passion; and for the first time he raised his head and looked into her face. "I dare not ask--I am not worthy! If there is anything that you can bear to say--to give me--you must do it of your own free will; I cannot ask you for anything."

"But you know," said Cynthia, looking at him at last, and letting, the gleam of a smile appear through the tears that filled her eyes, "a woman likes to be asked."

And then, when their eyes had once met, their lips met too, and there was no need for him to ask her anything.

But, when there was no longer any need, he found it easier to ask questions.

"Cynthia, my darling, do you love me?"

"With my whole heart, Hubert!"

"And will you--will you really--be--my wife?"

"Yes, Hubert."

"And you forgive me? Oh, that is more wonderful than all! You bow me to the earth with your goodness--you and your father, Cynthia! What can I do to be worthy of it? He is going to give me his name as well as yourself; and Heaven knows that I will do my best to keep it clean!"

His head sank on her bosom.

"Hubert," she said, "you must not talk in that way! Do you think that I should ever be ashamed of your name, darling? It is just that my father has no son, and does not want his old name to die out. If you will sacrifice your name, instead of my sacrificing mine, as women generally do, you will make him very happy and very proud of you. He wants a son, and you will be as a son to him, Hubert darling, will you not?"

And so the treaty was ratified.

Hubert and Cynthia were married in three weeks; and the marriage turned out an uncommonly happy one. Contrary to even Cynthia's expectations, Westwood and his son-in-law became the very best of friends. Westwood was proud of Hubert's literary knowledge, of his former social standing, of his many gifts and accomplishments. It was he who one day proposed that Hubert should go back to the name of Lepel--the name by which he had been known in the literary and dramatic world, and by which he would perhaps be remembered long after "the Beechfield tragedy" was forgotten.

But Hubert refused. He was too proud of the new name that he had won, he said, ever to give it up. As for literature, he had no inclination for it now. In this new home, in a new world, with father, wife, and boys beside him, and a political career which opened out a future such as he had never dreamed of when he was writing his plays and poems in Russell Square--a future made easy to him by Westwood's position and character in the States, and also by the large fortune which Miss Vane had left him unconditionally on her death--he had no wish to change his lot in life. Out of evil had come good; but only through repentance and the valley of humiliation, without which he would indeed have gone wearily and sadly to an end without honor and without peace. But he had won a great victory; and he was not without his great reward.

THE END.