Chapter 47

FINIS.

It is, alas! true in this world that often the machinations of the wicked prosper. By all the laws of morality Bertha Keys ought to have come to condign punishment; she ought to have gone under; she ought to have disappeared from society; she ought to have been hooted and disliked wherever she showed her face.

These things were by no means the case, however. Bertha, playing a daring game, once more achieved success.

By means of threatening to take her work elsewhere she secured admirable terms for her writing--quite double those which had been given to poor Florence. She lived in the best rooms in Prince's Mansions, and before a year had quite expired she was engaged to Tom Franks. He married her, and report whispers that they are by no means a contented couple. It is known that Franks is cowed, and at home at least obeys his wife. Bertha rules with a rod of iron; but perhaps she is not happy, and perhaps her true punishment for her misdeeds has begun long ago.

Meanwhile Florence, released from the dread of discovery, her conscience once more relieved from its burden of misery, bloomed out into happiness, and also into success.

Florence wrote weekly to Trevor, and Trevor wrote to her, and his love for her grew as the days and weeks went by. The couple had to wait some time before they could really marry, but during that time Florence learned some of the best lessons in life. She was soon able to support herself, for she turned out, contrary to her expectations, a very excellent teacher. She avoided Tom Franks and his wife, and could not bear to hear the name of the _Argonaut_ mentioned. For a time, indeed, she took a dislike to all magazines, and only read the special books which Mrs. Trevor indicated.

Kitty Sharston was also her best friend during this time of humiliation and training, and when the hour at last arrived when she was to join Trevor, Kitty said to her father that she scarcely knew her old friend, so courageous was the light that shone in Florence's eyes, and so happy and beaming was her smile.

"I have gone down into the depths," she said to Kitty, on the day when she sailed for Australia; "it is a very good thing sometimes to see one's self just down to the very bottom. I have done that, and oh! I hope, I do hope that I shall not fall again."

As to Mrs. Trevor, she also had a last word with Kitty.

"There was a time, my dear," she said, "when knowing all that had happened in the past, I was rather nervous as to what kind of wife my dear son would have in Florence Aylmer, but she is indeed now a daughter after my own heart--brave, steadfast, earnest."

* * * * *

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