‘You might get plain sewing and out-door work, too, without going as far as Tavistock Moor.’
‘But I am known there. I am not the sort of woman—I mean as yet—to make my way alone among strangers.’
‘You shall neither go to Tavistock Moor nor among strangers. You shall remain with me.’ Gaston said this with slow emphasis. ‘The law is on my side.’
Poor Dinah started up. The world seemed to float away from before her. A piteous look in which—yes, amidst all its anguish—there was a tremble of hope, went across her blanched face.
‘My sins have been grievous enough, the sins of carelessness and selfishness—they have not gone deeper. Let the future make up for them. Forgive me, Dinah!’ Arbuthnot’s arms were opened wide. ‘I could not work, I could not live without you. I love you better than my life.’
With a cry as of a child taken back, unexpectedly, to the lost shelter of home, Dinah fell upon his breast.
CHAPTER XLVI A BYE-TERM MAN
But no such good thing as reconciliation fell to Marjorie Bartrand.