CHAPTER XIV.
We returned home.
"Miss Eastinhoe is dead!" I said to Mr. Jacobs.
"It is really better," remarked Lamb Ral, who chanced to be astrally present, being also in Ireland with Number One at the same moment.
"There was absolutely no other way of concluding the story. She wouldn"t be a fourth wife; besides, she was so shadowy a personage that n.o.body cared anything about her."
"No," said Mr. Jacobs. "I had wholly forgotten that."
"You had better go and be a nun," Lamb Ral continued, reclining upon a tiffin. "Trade is dull, and your last trick in gla.s.s emeralds has been discovered."
"On the whole I think I will," replied Jacobs. "Briggs, I have given my fortune to Miss Eastinhoe"s brother, who rescued me from the gutter. To you I give this diamond. I know you too well to trust you with anything else. Nay," he added, seeing my inquiring look, "do not ask its price or try it with a file until I am gone."
"You won"t come and be a nun yourself, Mr. Briggs?" Lamb Ral inquired, with some apprehension.
"Thanks, no," I answered, drawing my tiffin over my shoulders, "I"ll write the thing up."
"Thank you, n.o.ble friend," Jacobs said, grasping my hand with emotion.
"You have been the instructor and the genius of my love. I go to be a nun. Be yourself what you have made me."
One last, loving look,--one more pressure of the reluctant fingers, and those two went out, hand in hand, under the clear stars, and I saw them no more.
POSTSCRIPT.
I afterwards ascertained that the fortune left to Mr. Eastinhoe consisted chiefly of the three discarded wives of Mr. Jacobs.
"I had no means of supporting them," Mr. Eastinhoe remarked, gravely,--he was from Bombay, and Bombay men never smile,--"so I was forced to have them served for tiffin. What will you take?"
"A peg of tiffin," I replied, with a pensive sigh.
FINISH.