In the epilogue, the older Leo summarizes how profoundly the experience has affected him. Forbidding himself to think about the scandal, he had shut down his emotions and imaginative nature, leaving room only for facts. As a result, he never has been able to establish intimate relationships. Now, looking back on the events through the eyes of a mature adult, he feels it is important to return to Brandham some 50 years later in order to tie up loose ends. There he meets Marian's grandson and finds Marian herself living in her former nanny's cottage. He also learns that Lord Trimingham had married Marian and acknowledged Ted's son by her as his own. He had died in 1910, and Marcus and his elder brother were killed in World War I and Marian's son in World War II. In the end, the elderly Marian persuades Leo, the only other survivor from her past, to act once more as go-between and assure her estranged grandson that there was nothing to be ashamed of in her affair with Ted Burgess.