His face fell, and he winced visibly, though his voice was very quiet as he replied: “In that case I must be outcast again, but with this difference, that now I shall have no hope left, and in the worst of my troubles hope never failed me before.”
But Bertha had already repented of her teasing, and, slipping her hand into his, murmured softly—
“And it need not fail you now.”
Hilda was dreadfully disappointed to find that Bertha was not coming to keep house for her in Adelaide, while Anne wrote long letters protesting that Bertha was too much of a baby to think of getting married yet for years to come. But when Tom, at the instigation of Grace, wrote to them of the tremendous changes which had taken place in Bertha, and the capable manner in which she had borne herself through crises which might well have tried the nerves of a much older person, the elder sisters decided that she was at last able to take her own way, and to choose her own lot for herself.
The case of diamonds, which had given so much trouble and anxiety to Bertha, was sold to an American millionaire, something in shoe blacking he was, and they realized the two hundred thousand dollars which the old man had said that they were worth. Some of the money went to provide Grace with the best medical skill the Dominion could supply, another portion was set aside as a wedding gift to Bertha, and some of the remainder went in building a more commodious house at Duck Flats; for nothing would induce Tom Ellis to leave the prairie which he so dearly loved.
Bertha protested at the size of the gift which was to be hers when she married, but Grace stopped her, saying, with a laugh which bordered closely on tears—
“But for you, dear, there had been no money at all, for Uncle Joe’s affairs are so hopelessly involved, and he has muddled so much money away in foolish speculation, that when it is wound up his estate will only just about clear itself.”
“That is all the more reason why you should keep the money, and it is no virtue of mine that I took care of the stones, seeing that I supposed them to be another man’s, and only waited for the chance of restoring them to him. It is not a virtue to be honest,” Bertha repeated, with emphasis.
“I think that it must be, seeing that it is a vice to be dishonest,” said Grace, as she leaned her head against Bertha’s shoulder. “But if it had not been for you and your brave doing of hard and unpleasant duty, I should not have been here at all. I could not have struggled through all that long, hard time of helplessness if it had not been for you. It was because of you, and what you did for me, that I kept my hold on hope, and it was hope that saved my life.”