The rest of the party had pushed forward, for they had been promised a surprise. Ida would have lingered, but Gregory pulled her on. He wanted to hear the comments. The racket of the drills had stopped. Ida saw the last of the guests disappear up a short ladder.
“Am I to go up into a stope?” she asked.
“If you want to see what we’ve come for.” He ran up the ladder, and she followed, insinuated herself into the hole and stood upright in the large excavation on the vein.
“Is it gold?” she gasped.
“No, but it’s a streak—a shoot—of chalcopyrite ten feet wide and of the highest value. And it may go down eight or nine hundred feet before it loses its richness and degenerates into a lower grade of ore. But there may be millions of tons of that. This is one of the few great shoots of chalcopyrite known.”
“Gregory!” said Ida ecstatically, “do you remember I always had such faith in you that I urged you so often to prospect on the ranch that you got quite cross?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Never say I doubted you. I may be enchanted at all this success and recognition of your abilities, but I have never had the least sensation of surprise.”
Gregory smiled down into the eager beautiful face so close to his shoulder. She had manipulated him down the ladder into the tunnel and for the moment they were alone. “I hope you are half as proud of me as I am of you,” he said gallantly, although he was a trifle uneasy; not because she looked as if she might kiss him there in the semi-dark, but because he felt an impulse to kiss her. For the moment he regretted the wild romance upon which he was embarked, the torments of its present, the tragic possibilities of its future. Ida now would make an ideal wife, demanding far less of his jealously guarded inner self, to say nothing of his time, than Ora, who had that most terrible of all gifts, a passionate soul. But this disloyalty was brief, and he frowned and disengaged his hand, although he was far from suspecting that Ida had yielded to the temptation to pay him deliberate court.
“I shall be able to give you a string of pearls before long,” he said lightly, “or a million or two to play with. I want to hear what these men have to say. Suppose you go back with Lord John, and tell them that we are coming up soon for lunch. Ring the bell in the station twice for the skip and three times for hoist.”