Madam was conveyed with the greatest care and tenderness to the best room in the house, Mrs. Lennox’s own room, which it was a great satisfaction to that kind soul to give up to her, making the little sacrifice with joy.

“I have always thought what a nice room to be ill in—don’t you think it is a nice room, Grace?—and to get better in, my dear. You can step into the fresh air at once as soon as you are strong enough, and there is plenty of room for us all to come and sit with you; and, please God, we’ll soon have you well again and everything comfortable,” cried Mrs. Lennox, her easy tears flowing softly, her easy words rolling out like them. Madam accepted everything with soft thanks and smiles, and a quiet ending seemed to fall quite naturally to the agitated day. Rosalind spent the night by her mother’s bedside—the long, long night that seemed as if it never would be done. When at last it was over, the morning made everything more hopeful. A famous doctor, who happened to be in the neighborhood, came with a humbler brother from Aix and examined the patient, and said she had no disease—no disease—only no wish or intention of living. Rosalind’s heart bounded at the first words, but fell again at the end of the sentence, which these men of science said very gravely. As for Mrs. Trevanion, she smiled at them all, and made no complaint. All the day she lay there, sometimes lapsing into that momentary death which she would not allow to be called a faint, then coming back again, smiling, talking by intervals. The children did not tire her, she said. Little Johnny, accustomed to the thought that “the lady” was mamma, accepted it as quite simple, and, returning to his usual occupations, drove a coach and four made of chairs in her room, to her perfect satisfaction and his. The cracking of his whip did not disturb her. Neither did Amy, who sat on her bed, and forgot her troubles, and sang a sort of ditty, of which the burden was “Mamma has come back.” Sophy, wandering long about the door of the room, at last came in too, and standing at a distance, stared at her mother with those sharp, restless eyes of hers, like one who was afraid to be infected if she made too near an approach. And later in the afternoon Reginald came suddenly in, shamefaced and gloomy, and came up to the bed, and kissed her, almost without looking at her. At other times, Mrs. Trevanion was left alone with her brother-in-law and Rosalind, who understood her best, and talked to them with animation and what seemed to be pleasure.

“Rosalind will not see,” she said with a smile, “that there comes a time when dying is the most natural—the most easy way of settling everything—the most pleasant for every one concerned.” There was no solemnity in her voice, though now and then it broke, and there were pauses for strength. She was the only one of the three who was cheerful and at ease. “If I were so ill-advised as to live,” she added with a faint laugh, “nothing could be changed. The past, you allow, has become impossible, Rosalind; I could not go away again. That answered for once, but not again.”

“You would be with me, mother, or I with you; for I am free, you know—I am free now.”

Mrs. Trevanion shook her head. “John,” she said, “tell her; she is too young to understand of herself. Tell her that this is the only way to cut the knot—that it is the best way—the most pleasant—John, tell her.”

He was standing by with his head bent upon his breast. He made a hasty sign with his hand. He could not have spoken to save his own life, or even hers. It was all intolerable, past bearing. He stood and listened, with sometimes an outcry—sometimes, alas, a dreadful consent in his heart to what she said, but he could not speak.

The conviction that now is the moment to die, that death is the most natural, noble, even agreeable way of solving a great problem, and making the path clear not only for the individual most closely concerned, but for all around, is not unusual in life. Both in the greater historical difficulties, and in those which belong to private story, it appears often that this would be the better way. But the conviction is not always sufficient to carry itself out. Sometimes it will so happen that he or she in whose person the difficulty lies will so prevail over flesh and blood, so exalt the logic of the situation, as to attain this easy solution of the problem. But not in all cases does it succeed. Madam proved to be one of those who fail. Though she had so clearly made out what was expedient, and so fully consented to it, the force of her fine organization was such that she was constrained to live, and could not die.

And, what was more wonderful still, from the moment when she entered Mrs. Lennox’s room at Bonport, the problem seemed to dissolve itself and flee away in unsubstantial vapor-wreaths like a mist, as if it were no problem at all. One of the earliest posts brought a black-edged letter from England, announcing the death of Mr. Blake, the second executor of Reginald Trevanion’s will, and John, with a start of half-incredulous wonder, found himself the only responsible authority in the matter. It had already been his determination to put it to the touch, to ascertain whether such a will would stand, even with the chilling doubt upon his mind that Mrs. Trevanion might not be able to explain the circumstances which involved her in suspicion. But now suddenly, miraculously, it became apparent to him that nothing need be done at all, no publicity given, no scandal made. For who was there to take upon him the odious office of reviving so odious an instrument? Who was to demand its observance? Who interfere with the matter if it dropped into contempt? The evil thing seemed to die and come to an end without any intervention. Its conditions had become a manifest impossibility—to be resisted to the death if need were; but there was no need: for had they not in a moment become no more than a dead letter? Might not this have been from the beginning, and all the misery spared? As John Trevanion looked back upon it, asking himself this question, that terrible moment in the past seemed to him like a feverish dream. No one of the actors in it had preserved his or her self-command. The horror had been so great that it had taken their faculties from them, and Madam’s sudden action, of which the reasons were only now apparent, had cut the ground from under the feet of the others, and forestalled all reasonable attempts to bring something better out of it. She had not been without blame. Her pride, too, had been in fault; her womanish haste, the precipitate measures which had made any better solution impossible. But now all that was over. Why should she die, now that everything had become clear?

The circumstances got revealed, to some extent, in Aix, among the English visitors who remained, and even to the ordinary population in a curious version, the point of the rumor being that the mysterious English lady had died with the little somnambulist in her arms, who, it was hoped for the sake of sensation, had died too. This was the rumor that reached Everard’s ears on the morning after, when he went to seek his mother in the back room she had inhabited at the hotel, and found no trace of her, but this legend to explain her absence. It had been hard to get at his heart, perhaps impossible by ordinary means; but this news struck him like a mortal blow. And his organization was not like hers. He fell prostrate under it, and it was weeks before he got better and could be removed. The hands into which this weakling fell were nerveless but gentle hands. Aunt Sophy had “taken to” him from the first, and he had always responded to her kindness. When he was able to go home she took “Grace’s boy” to her own house, where the climate was milder than at Highcourt; and by dint of a quite uncritical and undiscriminating affection, and perfect contentment with him as he was, in the virtue of his convalescence, did more to make of Edmund Everard a tolerable member of an unexacting society than his mother could ever have done. There are some natures for whose treatment it is well that their parents should be fools. It seems cruel to apply such a word to the kind but silly soul who had so much true bounty and affection in her. She and he gave each other a great deal of consolation and mutual advantage in the course of the years.

Russell had been, like Everard, incapable of supposing that the victim might die under their hands; and when all seemed to point to that certainty, the shock of shame and remorse helped to change the entire tenor of her life. She who had left the village triumphantly announcing herself as indispensable to the family and the children, could not return there in circumstances so changed. She married Mrs. Lennox’s Swiss servant in haste, and thereafter spent her life in angry repentance. She now keeps a Pension in Switzerland, where her quality of Englishwoman is supposed to attract English visitors, and lays up her gains bitterly amid “foreign ways,” which she tells any new-comer she cannot abide.

And Rosalind did what probably Mr. Ruskin’s Rosiere, tired of her seven suitors, would in most cases do—escaping from the illusions of her own imagination and from the passion which had frightened her, fell back upon the steady, faithful love which had executed no hard task for her, done no heroic deed, but only loved her persistently, pertinaciously, through all. She married Roland Hamerton some months after they all returned home. And thus this episode of family history came to an end. Probably she would have done the same without any strain of compulsion had these calamities and changes never been.

THE END.