He would have no mercy and Deverel Smith knew it. When he stood’ facing Simon at the portals of Worst whistle he must have realised that at last he faced an adversary stronger than himself.

So he died—as he had lived—dramatically. When Simon demanded a carriage to take me back to Kelly Grange—for he had galloped to Worstwhistle on one of his fleetest horses-and when it was brought for him and he had lifted me in and prepared to leave for Kelly Grange, Deverel Smith had already gone back to the Revels.

He went to the house and right to the top of the east wing, to that balcony which was the only one in the house from which a Rockwell had not fallen to his death. He threw himself over in a last defiant gesture, as though by so doing he proved to the world what he had always sought to prove to himself: he was of that family, and Kirkland Revels meant to him all that it ever could to any member of the family who had been born there and lived his life within its walls.

There is little else to say. Mrs. Smith—whose health improved after her husband’s death—went away with Damaris, I heard later that Damaris made a brilliant marriage in London. Luke went up to Oxford and there collected several bad debts and became involved in some trouble with a young woman. That was all part of growing up, said Sir Matthew, who had done it all before him. Ruth had changed too. Her manner to me grew warmer and, though we should never be great friends, she was contrite because of her readiness to play the doctor’s game, even though she was ignorant of his wicked est motives Sarah remained—as she always had been—my good friend Gleefully she told me she had completed the picture. I was there, with Gabriel and Friday, but I was in my own room at Kirkland Revels, not in a cell. She had wanted to warn me because she had known I was in imminent danger, but she had not realised that the monk and the doctor were one and the same, and this had baffled her. How happy she was now that the danger was past; she was as eager for the birth of my child as I was.

It was a wonderful day when Gabriel was born and it was known that he would live and that I should recover from my ordeal, which was a little more severe than it would have been owing to the upsets of the proceeding months. I remember lying with my child in my arms, experiencing that wonderful feeling of lassitude which I suppose is one of the most enviable feelings a woman can have. People had been coming to see me; and then, suddenly, there was Simon. He had already told me that he had begun to suspect the doctor; and it was he who, after Deverel Smith’s death, discovered the way into the secret chamber from the Abbey side. Mary-Jane and I had come near to finding it on that Christmas morning. Had we removed the stones which, in her exasperation, Mary-Jane had kicked, we should have disclosed the flight of steps leading down to the chamber in which she found the robe. We eventually learned that the passage connecting the house with the Abbey vaults had been constructed when the house was built.

Considering the emergencies which could so easily arise, the proximity to the house of such an excellent hiding-place would have seemed too important to be overlooked.

It was some years later when, exploring the tunnels, I discovered a secret recess hidden by a pile of stones and, removing these, came on Friday’s grave. I guessed then that Deverel Smith had poisoned him and buried him in this spot. There was nothing left but his bones.

Simon had come to the conclusion that the doctor’s motive was to prevent my bearing a living child, so that Luke should inherit, and marry Damaris.

” For that reason,” he had explained, ” I paid attention to her. I knew she was not as interested in young Luke as she pretended to be, and I wanted to see the effect on her father if someone else began paying court to her.”

” It sounds as good a reason as the other,” I told him.

” What other?” he wanted to know.

” That she happens to be one of the most attractive women either of us can ever have seen.”

He grinned at that and seemed pleased; and now that I know him well I understand that it was my jealousy-that pleased him far more than Damaris’s charms, And when he stood looking at my son I saw the regret in his face, and I said: ” What is it, Simon?”

Then he looked straight at me and said: “He’s a grand chap, but there’s one thing wrong with him.”

” What’s that, Simon?”

” He ought to be mine,” said Simon.

That was a proposal of marriage, and it was for this reason that as I lay there with the child I experienced the happiest moment of my life which I had known up to that time.

All that spring and summer we made our plans. Because my son Gabriel would one day be master of Kirkland Revels, he should be brought up between the Revels and Kelly Grange, and this would mean that to some extent the two estates would be as one.

Uncle Dick came home and it was wonderful to accept the close relationship between us. He gave me away when, the following Christmas, I married Simon. And as we came down the aisle together I thought: And that is the end of the beginning.

Then I wondered what the future would hold for us and if in the years ahead we should weather the storms which must surely beset two such personalities as ours. Life perhaps would not be always calm between us. We both were head strong, and neither of us meek.

But as we came out into the Christmas sunshine, my spirits were lifted.

I knew there was nothing to fear, for there was love between us, and it is love which casts out fear.