The Peace of Ryswick brought about many changes in both France and England. It opened each country to the other—for a time, though but a short one!—it enabled the refugees of each to return to their own lands, and for a few years England and her neighbours were not at open enmity.

Yet one refugee there was who never returned to France, but who, in the country of his adoption, and with his beautiful wife by his side and at his knee his children, took no part in the strife between the two lands or in their politics. Instead, he dwelt upon the estate he had bought in the heart of Surrey—with the money he had realized by the sale of his property in France—and there, a prosperous gentleman, passed life easily and well.

But there was no longer any Duc de Vannes in France—that old title was never revived after the death of the late owner of it on the plains of Salzbach—and in Surrey the handsome grave gentleman, who was known to be a wealthy emigrÉ from across the Channel, was invariably spoken of and addressed as Mr. St. George.

And he was very happy thus!—happy when he thought of all the dangers he had passed through safely—though sometimes in the night his wife would hear him mutter in his sleep, "At dawn, at dawn!" and know that in his dreams his mind had gone back to that summer morning on the Place de GrÈve, when, putting out her hand, she would softly wake him; happy, too, in his children—in the one whose love had come back to him as he had prayed so long it might; happy in those others whom God had sent him: in the bright, handsome boy who bore his own name; and in the delicate, beautiful girl who bore her mother's—AurÉlie.

And happy beyond all thought and early expectation when she, that mother, was by his side, or when, rising from her place near him, and stroking back the long hair from his forehead—now streaked with silver—and kissing him, would murmur:

"'If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small,'" and then falling on her knees beside him would whisper, "But your strength was great, my love, and in that strength you were able to endure."

THE END.