Need I dwell further upon the stirring events of that night? It is assuredly sufficient to say that the arrests made by the police numbered nearly forty persons, all of whom were charged with various offences, in addition to being found in an illicit gaming-house. Many of them, old offenders and desperate characters notwithstanding the fact that they were outwardly respectable members of society, in due course received long periods of imprisonment, but Julie Fournereau, in consideration of the information she had given regarding poor Reggie's death, was dismissed with a fine of two thousand francs as owner of the house in question, and has since disappeared into obscurity.
Ulrica arrived in Paris next day with Gerald, and was absolutely dumfounded when we related the whole of the amazing story. That day too proved the happiest in all my life! Need I relate how on the following morning Ernest sought me and begged me to forgive? Or how, with tears of joy, I allowed him to hold me once more in his strong arms as of old and shower hot, fervent kisses upon my brow? No. If I were to commence to relate the joys that have now come to me I should far exceed the space of a single volume. It is enough that you, reader, to whom I have made confession, should know that within a fortnight we all returned to New York by way of Liverpool, and that while Ulrica became engaged to Gerald and soon afterwards married him with the old man's heartiest approval, Ernest again asked me to become his wife—a contract which was fulfilled amid great éclat within a month of our arrival back in Washington.
Ulrica tells me that she is no longer world-weary, living only for excitement, as in those fevered days by-gone, but that her life is full of a peaceful happiness that cannot be surpassed. Nevertheless I cannot really bring myself to believe that she is any happier than I am with Ernest, for the estrangement has rendered him all the more dear to me, and we are indeed supremely content in each other's perfect love. Mrs. Thorne has returned to her home in Philadelphia, fully satisfied at having cleared up the mystery surrounding poor Reggie's tragic death, while old Benjamin Keppel, of Pittsburg, still spends his winters in rather lonely grandeur in his great white villa amid the palms outside Nice, working in secret at his ivory-turning and giving at intervals those princely entertainments for which he has become so famed in the cosmopolitan society which suns itself upon the Riviera.
As for Ernest and myself, we have not visited Nice since, for we retain a far too vivid recollection of those dark days of doubt, desperation, and despair—and of our strange and tragic meeting at The Sign of the Seven Sins.
This book is provided by FunNovel Novel Book | Fan Fiction Novel [Beautiful Free Novel Book]