She turned her wild eyes to his, and his look was sufficient. She left her father and the next moment rested in his arms.
“Good-bye, and I need not say God bless you, my darling,” said the Doctor, with his voice quivering a little. “There, au revoir. Clive will ask your pardon another time. Not now.”
The next morning Clive Reed had to be helped up the steps into Doctor Praed’s house in Russell Square, a relapse having prostrated him; and by the time he was about again the ‘White Virgin’ mine was a solitude once more. It was waiting for orders to go forth about the sale of the valuable engines and other machinery, Robson now having the property in charge, and going over four or five times a week to see that the place was uninjured, though the weather had already begun to make its mark.
One day he met the Major, and was ready enough to become communicative, and tell how Sturgess had been taken bad the day he returned to the mine, and how he had been fetched at last by friends who came all the way from Cornwall.
“Death’s mark was on him, safe enough, sir. I shouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that he had gone.”
“And those gentlemen?” said the Major, clearing his throat, and speaking still huskily, for he did not like his task.
“Mr Jessop Reed and Mr Wrigley, sir? Oh, they haven’t been down again. Don’t suppose they will come, for the poor mine’s played out.”
Two months more had passed away before Clive Reed visited those parts again. He was thin and worn, but there was a bright look in his eyes, as he breasted the hills from Blinkdale and plunged down into the deep, chasm-like vales. For he knew that the past, with its cruel doubting, was forgiven, and that the woman he loved more than life was ready to take him to her breast.
It was down the deep valley by the side of the rushing river that Dinah did take him to her throbbing heart, and hold him as tightly as his arms grasped her; for in that solitary place, where the glancing sunbeams shot from the silver river, there were only the trout to tell tales, and the tales they told never reached the air.
She had gone to meet him, and when they had sauntered on another half mile there was the Major whipping a dark pool under the shadow of the rocks.