"God kept it. And I have it; here!" and she pressed her hands tight over her bosom. "And here I must keep it till I give it into his hands, if I follow him round the world!" And as she spoke her eyes shone in the lamplight, with an unearthly brilliance which made Mary shudder.
Mark Armsworth poured a libation to the goddess of Puzzledom, in the shape of a glass of port, which first choked him, and then descended over his clean shirt front. But after he had coughed himself black in the face, he began:—
"My good girl, if you are Grace Harvey, you're welcome to my roof and an honour to it, say I: but as for taking all that money with you across the seas, and such a pretty helpless young thing as you are, God help you, it mustn't be, and shan't be, and that's flat."
"But I must go to him!" said she in so naïve half-wild a fashion, that Mary, comprehending all, looked imploringly at her father, and putting her arm round Grace, forced her into a seat.
"I must go, sir, and tell him—tell him myself. No one knows what I know about it."
Mark shook his head.
"Could I not write to him? He knows me as well as he knows his own father."
Grace shook her head, and pressed her hand upon her heart, where Tom's belt lay.
"Do you think, madam, that after having had the dream of this belt, the shape of this belt, and of the money which is in it, branded into my brain for months—years it seems like—by God's fire of shame and suspicion;—and seen him poor, miserable, fretful, unbelieving, for the want of it—O God! I can't tell even your sweet face all.—Do you think that now I have it in my hands, I can part with it, or rest, till it is in his? No, not though I walk barefoot after him to the ends of the earth."
"Let his father have the money, then, and do you take him the belt as a token, if you must—"