CHAPTER XXV.
CLOSING STRANDS.
Hamilton Fairfax came into the drawing-room of their newly bought house in Kent and kissed his wife, and sat down in a deep armchair. She perched herself upon the arm and leaned her shoulder against his. He was looking gloomy, and she commented on it.
“I don’t feel cheerful, my dear, and that’s a fact,” he said. “I’ve had to run down to Portland to see that pernicious old guardian of yours, and the sight of fallen splendor is never very exhilarating.”
“Poor Mr. Shelf!” said Amy Fairfax, softly. “I suppose he deserves his fourteen years, but, on my soul, I’m sorry for him. I wish from my heart that he had managed to get away in the Gazelle.”
“And scoffed at the law?”
“Oh, bother the law! I’m thinking of the man; not of what he did. He was always most kind to me.”
“If it hadn’t been for some one else who took an interest in you, my dear, he’d have made off with your fortune with his other plunder.”
“Don’t blow your own trumpet, Hamilton. I know quite well all about that. But the facts remain that he didn’t get it; and that he was always fond of me; and that he maneuvered to get me out of the house that awful night when the exposé came. That last thing alone would make me think kindly of him if nothing else did. What is he doing now? Tell me!”
“Studying the mechanical properties of oolitic limestone; making up to the jail chaplain; and sampling a diet which is entirely new to him. He’s gone through his spell of solitary work, and is employed now in the quarries. He has lost three stone in weight, wears his knickerbocker suit most jauntily, and looks brown and muscular, and vastly healthy. He is not so dejected as one might expect. He has a position in Portland just as he had in London. The humbler operators look up to him and envy his dashing knaveries. They naturally feel a respect for a man who has pilfered more pounds than they have stolen pennies, and yet earned no heavier a sentence.”
“You are bitter against him, Hamilton.”