Dainty's Cruel Rivals Part 34

"When Dainty was immured in that dungeon where you expected her to die, your tool, Sheila Kelly, threw caution to the winds, and betrayed to her in boastful words your agency in her kidnapping. It is not your fault that my wife did not die of the poison you gave her to swallow, but only that the wind and rain revived her when she lay out in the road where you had her placed, believing her dead, with her lips sealed to your part in the martyrdom.

"It is not your fault," he added, turning to Olive and Ela, "that you failed to destroy her when you followed to the cabin where she lay unconscious, and fired it like the remorseless fiends that you are. But for John Franklin, who discovered your crime and saved her sweet life, she must have perished in those flames. But my wife, like the angel she is, forgives you everything, and will not let me prosecute you for your crimes. But you three guilty, shameless ones must leave Ellsworth at dawn, and it is best never to show your faces here again; for in making public the proofs of my marriage with Dainty and the strange interruption of the second ceremony, I shall not hesitate to expose your treachery."

So at dawn they went away--as far as they could on their scanty means--and the veil of a merciful oblivion fell over their future fate as scheming adventuresses to the end of their days.

Love and Dainty did not punish their arch-enemies, but they did not fail to reward all who had befriended them in their days of adversity. Mamma Chase lived with them at Ellsworth, Ailsa Scott spent all her summers there, and Doctor Platt remained the beloved friend of the family to the last day of his life.

THE END.