Dick laid his head on the table in sheer despair. "Ah Major, Major!" he cried, "I told her--I--you should have seen her face!" He burst into incoherent regrets, and praises of Belle's angelic innocence.
"It appears to me," remarked Major Marsden drily, "to be about the best thing that could have happened. Fiction is always unsafe. Belle,--as you call her--must have found it out sooner or later. The sooner the better, in my opinion."
"You wouldn't say that if you knew her as I do," explained the other eagerly; "or if you knew all that I do. There will be a smash some day soon, and it will kill Belle outright. Ah! if I hadn't been a fool and a brute, I might have stayed and perhaps kept things from going utterly wrong."
"Then why don't you go back?" asked his hearer impatiently.
"I can't! He won't have me in the office again. You don't know what mischief is brewing there."
"Thank you, I'd rather not know; but if you're certain this move of yours is final,--that is to say if you don't want to kiss and make friends with your cousin--[Poor Dick writhed inwardly, for he had kept back the full enormity of his offence]--then I might be able to help you in getting employment. They are laying a new telegraph-line to the front, and, as it so happens, a friend wrote to me a few days ago asking if I knew of any volunteers for the work."
The lad's face brightened. "Telegraphs! oh, I should like that! I've been working at them these two years, and I think--but I'm not sure--that I've invented a new--"
"All right," interrupted Major Marsden brusquely; "they can try you, at any rate. You can start tonight; that settles it. Now you had better go round and get your things ready."
Dick writhed again in mingled pride and regret. "I can't; I've said good-bye to them all; besides, I left a bundle of sorts in the bazaar before I went--there."
Philip Marsden shrugged his shoulders, remarking that the boy might do as he liked, and went off to his work; returning about two o'clock, however, to find Dick asleep, wearied out even by a half-night's vigil of sorrow. "How soft these young things are," he thought, as he looked down on the sleeping boy, and noticed a distinctly damp pocket-handkerchief still in the half-relaxed hand. A certain scorn was in his heart, yet the very fact that he did notice such details showed that he was not so hard as he pretended. He went into the rough, disorderly room where he spent so many solitary evenings, lit a cigar, and walked about restlessly. Finally, telling himself the while that he was a fool for his pains, he sat down and wrote to Belle Stuart in this wise:--