Smailey then arrives and asks for everyone's attention. He felt it his duty as a magistrate to disbelieve Mrs. Van Brugh's statement that she hadn't married Captain Van Brugh, and so prove her guilty of a greater crime, and his advertisement for proof that Captain Van Brugh's first wife was not dead at the time of the current Mrs. Van Brugh's marriage has been answered. Ruth arrives, to the confusion of all, bearing the proof – but the proof turns out to be of Smailey's former fraud. He is arrested, though Fred promises to stay with him to the end, and the Athelneys, Ruth, Eve, and Mrs. Van Brugh plan to sail off to Australia together, where Dr. Athelney has been granted a bishopric, and they can live "humbly as become penitents, cheerfully as becomes those who have hope, earnestly as becomes those who speak out of the fullness of their experience" and teach "lessons of loving-kindness, patience, faith, forbearance, and charity."