"Thank you," he said. "I've gone fairly straight ever since. It hasn't been a very paying game. I tried my luck in the West, but it was right out. So I thought I'd come back here, and that was the turning-point. They took me on at the Fortescue Mine. It's a fiendish place, but I rather like it. I'm sub-manager there at present—till Harley goes."
"Ah!" She looked up at him again. "He is a dangerous man. He hates you, doesn't he?"
"Quite possibly," said Warden, with a smile. "That mine is rather an abode of hate all round. But we'll clean it out one of these days, and make a decent place of it."
"I hope you will succeed," she said, very earnestly.
"Thank you," he said again.
He was looking at her speculatively, as if there were something about her that he found hard to understand. Her agitation had subsided, leaving her with a piteous, forlorn look—the look of the wayfarer who is almost too tired to go any farther.
There fell a brief silence between them, then with a little smile she spoke.
"Are you going to give me back my brooch?"
He put his hand in his pocket. "I was nearly keeping it for good and all," he said, as he brought it out.
She took it from him and pinned it in her dress without words. Then, shyly, she proffered her hand. "Thank you. Good-bye!"