h such
worthy praise, whose career of honour you have promoted, and whose life,
unsatisfied by those honours, you will soothe with your filial love,
behold the husband of Nora Avenel! Kneel to your father! O Audley,
embrace your son!"

"Here, here!" exclaimed Egerton, as Leonard bent his knee,--"here to my
heart! Look at me with those eyes!--kindly, forgivingly: they are your
mother's!" His proud head sunk on his son's shoulder.

"But this is not enough," said Harley, leading Helen, and placing her by
Leonard's side. "You must open your heart for more. Take into its folds
my sweet ward and daughter. What is a home without the smile of woman?
They have loved each other from children. Audley, yours be the hand to
join,--yours be the lips to bless."

Leonard started anxiously. "Oh, sir!--oh, my father!--this generous
sacrifice may not be; for he--he who has saved me for this surpassing
joy--he too loves her!"

"Nay, Leonard," said Harley, smiling, "I am not so neglectful of myself.
Another home woos you, Audley. He whom you long so vainly sought to
reconcile to life, exchanging mournful dreams for happy duties,--he,
too, presents you to his bride. Love her for my sake,--for your own. She
it is, not I, who presides over this hallowed reunion. But for her, I
should have been a blinded, vindictive, guilty, repentant man; and--"
Violante's soft hand was on his lips. "Thus," said the parson, with mild
solemnity, "man finds that the Saviour's precepts, 'Let not the sun go
down upon thy wrath,' and 'Love one another,' are clews that conduct us
through the labyrinth of human life, when the schemes of fraud and hate
snap asunder, and leave us lost amidst the maze."

Egerton reared his head, as if to answer; and all present were struck
and appalled by the sudden change that had come over his countenance.
There was a film upon the eye, a shadow on the aspect; the words
failed his lips; he sunk on the seat beside him. The left hand rested
droopingly upon the piles of public papers and official documents, and
the fingers played with them, as the bedridden dying sufferer plays with
the coverlid he will soon exchange for the winding-sheet. But his right
hand seemed to feel, as through the dark, for the recovered son; and
having touched what it sought, feebly drew Leonard near and nearer.
Alas! that blissful PRIVATE LIFE--that close centre round the core of
being in the individual man--so long missed and pined for, slipped from
him,