The Red City Part 56

DEAR CHILDREN,

To say good-by is more than I will to bear. G.o.d bless you both! I go at once.

JOHAN GRAF VON EHRENSTEIN.

There were tears in the Pearl's eyes.

"He told me he would not say good-by. And is that his real name, Rene?

No, it is not; I know that much."

Rene smiled. "Some day," he said, "I shall tell you."

In a few minutes came his honor, Mr. Justice Wilson, saying: "I feared to be late. Madame," to Margaret, "here is a remembrance for you from our friend."

"Oh, open it!" she cried. "Ah, if only he were here!"

There was a card. It said, "Within is my kiss of parting," and as she stood in her bridal dress, Rene fastened the necklace of great pearls about her neck, while Madame de Courval looked on in wonder at the princely gift.

Then the Judge, taking them aside into Schmidt's room, said: "I am to give you, Vicomte, these papers which make you for your wife the trustee of our friend's estate, a large one, as you may know. My congratulations, Vicomtesse."

"He told me!" said Margaret. "He told me, Rene." She was too moved to say more.

In an hour, for this was not a time of wedding breakfasts, they were on their way to Cliveden, which Chief-Justice Chew had lent for their honeymoon.

So ends my story, and thus I part with these, the children of my mind.

Many of them lived, and have left their names in our history; others, perhaps even more real to me, I dismiss with regret, to become for me, as time runs on, but remembered phantoms of the shadow world of fiction.

_L'envoi_

Before De Courval and his wife returned to France, the Directory had come and gone, the greatest of soldiers had taken on the rule, and the grave Huguenot mother had gone to her grave in Christ Church yard.

Mrs. Swanwick firmly refused to leave her country. "Better, far better,"

she said, "Margaret, that thou shouldst be without me. I shall live to see thee again and the children."

In after years in Penn's City men read of Napoleon's soldier, General the Comte de Courval and of the American beauty at the Emperor's court, while over their Madeira the older men talked of the German gentleman who had been so long among them, and pa.s.sed so mysteriously out of the knowledge of all.