It was while he was thus employed that the first break occurred in the fine weather that had prevailed ever since their arrival at the island. It began with the gradual dying away of the trade wind, followed by a heavy banking-up of dark thundery-looking clouds along the western horizon. With the cessation of the wind the temperature rose to such a pitch that work became an impossibility, and Dick was at length reluctantly compelled to knock-off and return to the shore, much to Flora’s satisfaction—for she was continually in dread lest the untiring and feverish energy with which he laboured should result in his suffering a serious breakdown.
As it was too hot even to walk about, the pair were perforce compelled to remain inactive all the afternoon; and Flora inwardly decided that this would be a good opportunity for Dick to relate to her his promised story. It needed a very considerable amount of persuasion and coaxing to induce him to do so; but eventually he yielded and told her the whole miserable history from beginning to end, winding up with the words—
“And thus you find me here to-day, a disgraced and ruined man, under an assumed name, without prospects or hope of any description, with only a hundred pounds wherewith to begin a new career in an alien land, and no possibility whatever, so far as I can see, of ever being able to establish my innocence and so win reconciliation with my poor, proud, heart-broken father. Were it not for the fact that you are here, and must be restored to your friends with as little delay as may be, I could be well content to end my days here on this unknown island, alone and forgotten by all. Indeed, I think it more than likely that as soon as I have discharged my duty to you I shall return here.”
“My poor Dick,” exclaimed Flora, in tones of profound sympathy; “how you must have suffered! I am no longer surprised at your frequent fits of depression and melancholy; the wonder to me is that you did not go mad, or die of shame, in that horrible prison. But now that you have told me all you must put everything that is past behind you, and try to forget it; I believe your story implicitly; you could not be the man you have proved yourself to be to me, and be guilty of so mean an act as theft; oh no, nothing save your own admission could ever make me believe that of you. And you have all the sympathy of my heart, Dick; all my sympathy; all my esteem; all—oh, the thought of what you have been compelled to endure is terrible—terrible!”
And, to Leslie’s unspeakable consternation, the girl suddenly buried her face in her hands and sobbed as though her heart would break. The expression of her whole-hearted sympathy and perfect faith in him touched him profoundly.
“Don’t cry, darling, please don’t; I cannot bear it—and I am not worth it,” he protested. “I ought never to have told you. I was a selfish brute to extort your sympathy by the miserable recital of my own misfortunes; I have basely worked upon your feelings.”
“You shall not say it,” she answered, laying her hand upon his mouth; “I will not have you abuse yourself, you who have already suffered such unspeakable cruelty at the hands of others. You are not selfish; you are not base; you are nothing that is bad and everything that is good; you are a very king among men! Oh, Dick,” she continued, taking his hand in hers, “do not think me forward or unmaidenly in speaking thus to you, dear; I am not. But do you think I do not know what your feeling is toward me; do you think I do not know that you love me? You poor, simple-hearted fellow, you are far too honest and straightforward ever to be able to deceive a woman, especially in such a matter as that; you may have thought that you were very successfully concealing your feelings from me, but I have known the truth—oh, ever since we have been on this island.”
“It is true; God help me, it is true!” exclaimed Dick, smiting his forehead. “But it is also true that I never intended you to know. For what right have I, a disgraced and ruined man, to seek the love of any woman? And if I may not seek her love in return, why should I tell her that I love her?”
“You are looking at the matter with jaundiced eyes, Dick,” answered Flora, still retaining his hand in hers. “I cannot wonder that you feel your humiliation cruelly; but the humiliation is really not yours; it is that of those who so shamefully plotted to ruin you. You are guiltless of this horrible charge—I am as sure of that as I am that I am a living woman. Besides, who is to know that Richard Leslie is one and the same man with him who stood in the dock charged with that shameful crime, and was pronounced guilty upon the strength of cunningly devised and manufactured evidence? No one, of course, except my father; he must know; because, Dick dear, it is my fixed determination that he shall help you in this matter; you will accompany me to Bombay, and personally deliver me over into my father’s care. Then I shall tell him all that you have done for me, and been to me; and you will tell him your whole story, just as you have told it to me. And I am sure that, if only for the sake of his daughter, he will take up the matter and bring the truth to light. And, Dick, I am not going to allow your morbid feelings, or even maidenly reserve, to stand in the way of my happiness; you have confessed that you love me, and I know it to be true, for your eyes and your actions have told me so daily, for months past. It cannot be unmaidenly, therefore, in me to confess that I return your love with all my heart and soul.”
“Oh, Flora, my love, my heart’s darling, are you sure of this?” demanded Dick, laying his hands upon her shoulders and gazing into her eyes as though he would read her very soul. “Are you sure that you are not mistaking mere gratitude for a warmer feeling?”