“I don’t see why that should make any difference, sir,” said Pengelly. “I was talking to Bessie about it after Mrs Prawle had spoken, and I went against it; but she said it would be quite right, and hoped you would go.”
“Indeed!” said Geoffrey. “I say, Pengelly, how many times have you been there lately?”
“Every night, sir. It come of my taking a message, and money, and a parcel, from Mistress Mullion up at the cottage; for, though she can’t have her child back, because of old Mr Paul, her heart’s very sore about her, and she sends there every day.”
“And so you and Miss Bessie have been talking matters over, eh?”
“Yes, sir. I’m a poor fellow to go to a woman’s eye, but I’d try very hard to go to her heart,” said the miner, simply.
“I did not mean that, Pengelly,” said Geoffrey, smiling. “I meant about my matters.”
“Oh yes, sir, a deal; and if you can’t get elsewhere, I’d go there.”
The miner went off about his work, and Geoffrey began to think over what had been proposed.
“Oh, no; it would be madness to go there. It would be giving colour to the report;” and he dismissed the idea from his mind. But that evening, as he sat at the office-door upon the bleak, wind-swept promontory, with the remnants of a cheerless meal, brought him by one of the miners’ wives, upon the desk behind him, and the prospect of a night upon the bench beside the door, with a rolled-up coat for a pillow, his thoughts went back to the cottage at Gwennas, and he had to light a pipe to try and soothe himself, so bitter were his feelings.
“It’s too bad—a thousand times too bad for any thing,” he cried, as he gazed out to sea at the ever-darkening waves, now beginning to glitter with the reflections from the stars above.