"No; I have never doubted, in my inmost heart, though I blamed you," she said, and the tears now rained down over her cheeks. He threw his arms round her, and kissed the tears away.
"My darling! it was my great love for you—my desire that your name should not be bandied about in connection with mine as long as this accusation hung over my head."
She smiled up at him through her tears, while her head lay upon his breast, and said, with a little gesture of negation,
"'Perfect love casteth out fear.'"
Nearly an hour later, Mrs. Frampton, having finished her sketch, went in search of Grace. The sight which met her when, after hunting about for some time, she reached the little cove of rocks where her niece and a man were seated, their heads very close together, nearly caused the good lady a fit. Grace—Grace, of all the girls in the world! She was thunderstruck. She could hardly believe her eyes. The man's back was turned to her. She uttered a loud exclamation and dropped her parasol.
Grace sprang up, ran towards her aunt, and embraced her. At the same moment her companion turned, and Mrs. Frampton recognized in him the man she had been abusing for the last eight months.
It was an awkward moment for her, but she was equal to the emergency. She seized the situation at a glance; congratulated him on the result of the trial; reproached him roundly for his silence; and, if I may paraphrase the poet, "saying she would ne'er forgive, forgave him." How could she do otherwise? She was too clever a woman to stick to her small field-pieces, when she found they were only loaded with blank cartridge.
Mordaunt joined them soon afterwards, and behaved like a good fellow as he was, first of all, and a man of the world as he was, afterwards. He grasped with heartiness the hand of the man whom he knew now was to be his brother. And in the ruddy gold of waning day, behind the dark columns of the trees, the four drove back to Monterey.