A sweet calm day in early spring, Sir Karl and his wife stood on the steps of their house, hand in hand, ready to welcome Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve, who were driving up to pay a long visit. Lucy had recovered all her good looks; Karl's face had lost its sadness.
Things had been getting themselves straight after the dark time of trouble. Some pleasant neighbours were at the Maze now; Clematis Cottage was occupied by Margaret Sumnor. There was a new vicar of Foxwood. Mr. Sumnor, who had not been without his trials in life, had died in the winter. His widow and second family went to reside in London; Margaret, who had her own mother's fortune now--which was just enough to live upon quietly--removed to Clematis Cottage, to the extreme delight of Lady Andinnian. St. Jerome's had been converted into a schoolroom again: its former clergyman had retired into private life for a season, and no more omnibus-loads of young ladies came over from Basham. Sir Karl was earning popularity everywhere. Caring earnestly for those about him, actively promoting the welfare of all unceasingly and untiringly, generous in aiding, chary of fault-finding, Sir Karl Andinnian was esteemed and beloved even more than Sir Joseph had been. Nothing educates and softens the human heart like the sharp school of adversity.
"Lucy, you are a puzzle to me," said Mrs. Cleeve, when she had her daughter to herself up stairs. "In the autumn you were so ill and so sad; now you are looking so well and so radiantly happy."
"I am quite well, mamma, and happy."
"But what was the cause of your looking so ill then?"
Lucy did not answer, evading the question in the best way she could. That past time would be ever sacred between herself and her husband.
"Well, I cannot understand it," concluded Mrs. Cleeve. "I only hope you will continue as you are now. Sir Karl looks well, also; almost as he did when we first knew him at Winchester, before his brother brought that trouble on himself and all connected with him. To tell you the truth, Lucy, I thought when I was last here that you were both on the high road to consumption. Now you both look as though you were on the road to--to----"
"A fine old age," put in Lucy, as her mother broke down for want of a simile. "Well, mamma, I hope we are--if God shall so will it."
"And--why you have made this into a dressing-room again!" cried Mrs. Cleeve, as Lucy took down her hair, and rang for Aglaé.
"Yes; I wanted it as one when I went back to my own room."
"What do you do with the other room--the one you slept in?" questioned Mrs. Cleeve, throwing open the door as she spoke--for she had a great love of seeing into house arrangements. "You have had the bed taken away!"
"The room is not being used at present," replied Lucy. "Karl--Karl----"
"Karl--what?" asked Mrs. Cleeve, wondering at the sudden timidity, and looking round. Lucy's sweet face was blushing.
"Karl thinks I shall like to make it the day nursery."
"Oh, my dear! I am glad to hearthat."
Lucy burst into tears of emotion. A very slight occurrence served still to bring back the past and its repentance.
"Mamma, you do not know, you can never know, how good God has been to me in all ways; and how little I deserved it."
And so we leave all things at peace. The dark storms had rolled away and given place to sunshine.