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Afterwards.

“—But who that has loved forgets?”

Old Song.

Five years, fruitful in many a silent change, have passed since the life-chronicle which filled these pages, closed with Georgie Breton’s peaceful death; fruitful in so great changes, that before parting with the different persons who have filled our story-world, it is tempting to take one last glance into their altered lives & households, that we may carry away with us the memory, not of what they were, but of what they are. The villa at Nice in which Lord Breton & his young wife died has passed into other hands; but the story of the old English Lord’s death, followed so soon & so tragically by that of the beautiful milady, still clings to it, & marks it with a peculiar interest. As for Mrs. Rivers, on her eldest daughter’s death she returned at once to the seclusion of Holly Lodge, where she spends her time in tears & retirement, overwhelmed by her crape trimmings, overwhelmed by the education of her children, & by everything, poor lady, which comes in her way. A distant cousin of the late Lord Breton’s (a grave married man with a large family) has inherited his title & his estates; & there are three blooming, marrigeable girls at Lowood; for whom the new Lord & Lady Breton are continually giving croquet-parties, dinners & balls in the hope that the eligible young men of the county may be attracted thither, & discover their charms. Mr. and Mrs. Graham have come back to England too, & have bought a pretty, well-kept little place not far from London, whose walls are adorned with many foreign works of art, collected during their memorable tour on the continent. The honest couple live very quietly, keeping occasional feast-days when the postman leaves at the door a thick blue envelope with a foreign stamp; an envelope containing a pile of close-written sheets beginning “Darling Mamma & Papa” & ending “Your own loving daughter, Madeline.” And with what pride will they shew you a photograph, which was enclosed in one of these very letters, of a little, earnest, bright-eyed man of two or three, on the back of which a loving hand has written “Baby’s picture.” One more English household calls our attention before we wander back for the last time to Italian skies; a comfortable London house in a pleasant neighbourhood, near all the clubs. Jack Egerton is established there; our Bohemian Jack, who has come into a nice fortune in the course of these last years, & has also met with a pale, melancholy, fascinating French Marquise, who so far disturbed his cherished theories of misogynism, that a very quiet wedding was the result of their intimacy, & who now presides with a tact, a grace, & a dignity of which he may well be proud, at his friendly table. So we leave him; to turn once more before parting, to a familiar, though now a changed scene—the old studio on the third floor of the Roman palazzo, where in the old days, Hastings & Egerton lounged & painted. A Signore Inglese has rented the whole floor now; & that Signore is Guy. The studio is essentially as it was; but the glamour of a woman’s presence has cast the charm of order & homelikeness over its picturesque chaos, & the light footsteps of a woman cross & recross the floor as Hastings sit[s] at his easel in the sunshine. For, as will have been divined, Guy has fulfilled Georgie’s latest prayer, & for nearly five years Madeline Graham has been his wife. They spend their Winters always in Rome, for the sake at once of Madeline’s health & Hastings’ art-studies; & there is a younger Guy who is beginning to toddle across the studio floor to his father’s knee, guided by a little, blushing velvet-eyed Italian Nurse whom he has been taught to call Teresina. Guy works harder than of old, & is on a fair road to fame. He has not forgotten his old friend & Mentor, Egerton, but I doubt if he will ever accept the constant invitations to England which kind-hearted Jack sends him. For there are certain memories which time cannot kill, & change cannot efface. So Madeline is happy in a sunny, peaceful household; in returning health, & new & pleasant duties; in the most beautiful boy that mother ever sung to sleep or woke with a laughing kiss; & in a husband, who is the soul of grave courtesy & kindness. But Guy Hastings’ heart is under the violets on Georgie’s grave.

The End.

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