The earl looked amused at this fashion of making matters straight; but before they went away, he gladdened the hearts of the farmer and his wife.
"A thousand pounds!" said Mark, looking in the most bewildered fashion at the check he held in his hand—"a thousand pounds, my lord, to spend as I like! It is impossible—it cannot be true. I must not take it—I have done nothing to deserve it."
But Lord Linleigh greeted his scruples with:
"You have done for me and my daughter that which few would have done so well," he said.
"I did my duty, my lord—no less, no more; and a thousand pounds for doing my duty is an enormous reward."
But his surprise was redoubled when, added to this, the earl insisted that he should take a thousand pounds for Mattie's dowry, and would not hear of any refusal. Then, indeed, the tears stood, warm and bright, in Mark's eyes, and Mrs. Brace wept like a child. "A dowry for Mattie!"—the brightest hope, the maddest dream they had ever entertained. Mattie to have a fortune! Not that it would make her a wealthy heiress, but it would at least secure her from all want. Let them die now, whensoever Heaven pleased—their daughter would never want.
Lord Linleigh could never forget the thanks that were lavished on him—the gratitude, the warmth of emotion.
"And now," said the earl, "there is one thing more that I wish you to do for me. It relates to my daughter's engagement with Earle Moray."
Mark looked at him with anxious eyes.
"We have been speaking of that, my lord—my wife and I. It may not perhaps seem much of a match for her, now that she is my lady; but if you were to search the wide world over, you would never find any one who loved her so dearly as Earle—no one so honest, so good and true. It will be but a poor chance for her, my lord, if she finds a fortune and loses Earle."