CHAPTER XXVII.
CURTAIN.
Striking incidents will draw the writer; but we know that our readers would rather hear about the characters they can respect.

It seems, however, to be a rule in life, and in fiction, that interest flags when trouble ceases.

Now the troubles of our good people were pretty well over, and we will put it to the reader whether they had not enough.
Grace Clifford made an earnest request to Colonel Clifford and her father never to tell Walter he had been suspected of bigamy.

"Let others say that circumstances are always to be believed and character not to be trusted; but I, at least, had no right to believe certificates and things against my Walter's honor and his love.

Hide my fault from him, not for my sake but for his; perhaps when we are both old people I may tell him." This was Grace Clifford's petition, and need we say she prevailed?
Walter Clifford recovered under his wife's care, and the house was so large that Colonel Clifford easily persuaded his son and daughter-in-law to make it their home.