There was another long, dreamy time after this, and there were moments when Rhoda felt angry with herself for thinking so much about the man who now came to lay bare his plans, to consult her, so it seemed, when he was asking counsel of her father. And all at once she seemed to awaken to the fact that, by some means, the life of Geoffrey Trethick had become interwoven strangely with her own—that his success was her success, his failures hers; and yet he had spoken no word, given her no look. He was different to any man that she had ever met, and he even annoyed her sometimes by his quiet assumption of authority as the stronger in thought. For he would ask her advice, and often enough show the fallacy of what she had said.
Then she would think that they were becoming too intimate, and blame her father for encouraging the presence of this stranger; but Mr Penwynn seemed, after a life of immunity, to have taken the mine fever badly, and the thought of Geoffrey Trethick pretending to his daughter’s hand never occurred to him.
“No,” thought Rhoda, “papa thinks of nothing now but this speculation; and why should he? Geoffrey Trethick has never behaved otherwise than as a visitor working in my father’s interest;” and as she said this to herself, a curious feeling of pique arose, but only to be crushed at once.
Finally, Rhoda Penwynn’s verdict on Geoffrey Trethick was that he was a gentleman—a man of unstained honour, whom fate had placed in a town full of petty scandal.
The next day Rhoda endorsed her verdict, and it was in this wise.
She granted, as she started, that it was due to Geoffrey’s request, for otherwise she might not have gone. As it was, she started in the afternoon to walk over to Gwennas Cove, passing along the cliff, and looking somewhat eagerly down towards Wheal Carnac, where figures were moving and shaft smoking, while the great beam of the pumping-engine went steadily on with its toil.
She was half-startled to see how the wreck had been transformed into a busy scene of industry, and, in spite of herself, she felt a glow of pride as she recalled whose hand had brought about the change.
Her face turned hard directly after, as she thought of her father, and of how he had seemed to become inoculated with Geoffrey Trethick’s enthusiasm. He did not want for money, and yet he had entered upon this mining speculation—he of all men, who had laughed at the follies of those who embarked upon such ventures. What was to be the end?
She walked on, and soon after reached the spot where Bess Prawle had been driven to bay by the superstitious crowd; and, as the whole scene came back, with Geoffrey’s gallant behaviour, and the girl’s display of gratitude, Rhoda stopped short, with her eyes contracting, her brow ruffled with emotion, and her lips half parted. For she was startled at the pang of misery that shot through her. The contemptible scandal she had heard forced itself upon her, and she seemed obliged to couple with it the weak wanderings of poor old Mrs Prawle about Geoffrey and her child.
It was horrible! What had she been doing? How had her fancies been straying, she asked herself, as she awakened to the fact that imperceptibly her interest in Geoffrey had grown so warm that the thought of his caring for another caused her misery of the most acute kind.