"Heavens, Greville, you would not think of going there, and on the strength only of a dream?"
"No, Mary; you are not adapted to the life of a digger's wife," said he with a tender smile.
"As little as you are to be a digger," she replied, while caressing his hand, which, though manly, was a white one.
"The dream seemed a long, long one, Mary, though doubtless short enough in reality, so true it is, a writer tells us, that there is a drowsy state between sleeping and waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open and yourself half conscious of everything passing around you, than you would do in five nights with your eyes fast closed and your senses wrapt in perfect unconsciousness! So it was with me Mary; but the mountains seemed to sink; the scene to change and resolve itself into sweet and peaceful Finglecombe, with all its orchards and the Bay shining in the rising moon, even as it is doing now; but the heap of golden ore was still before me—till I awoke with a start, to find myself again—a beggar!"
"But beside we," said Mary, with a little laugh that ended in a sigh; "and if your dream will bear reading at all, Greville, it must be that your riches lie, not in California, but here in Finglecombe; though what they are, or where they are, unless they be Derval and me," she added, kissing him, "goodness only knows."
But full of his vivid dream, Greville Hampton made no response immediately. He sat lost in thought, passively gazing on the Bay, glittering and rippling beyond the boundary of his garden where a fallen beech of vast dimensions lay, with its end half-hidden in a rose-tree that was a mass of bloom. There was silence in the place—a drowsy summer silence; the sounds of the distant cob-village came faintly mingled with the lap, lap, lapping of the waves upon the shore.
"Supper waits, ma'am," said Patty Fripp, suddenly appearing in the porch, which was a veritable bower of roses and Virginia-creeper, for Patty—a robust and honest countrywoman, who was nurse to Master Derval, cook and housemaid by turns, and all together at times, and had come as a retainer to his father's house in better days, when she was a blooming lass of eighteen—was close on the wrong side of fifty now, but true as steel in their altered fortunes to Greville Hampton and her mistress.
He allowed himself to be led by Mary indoors, where in their snug little parlour, a room made pretty by many a knick-knack, the work of her industrious hands, a plain repast awaited them; the home-brewed ale frothed creamily in a great antique silver tankard, that had served his sire and grandsire before him, and which, nearly the sole family relic, bore the heraldic choughs borne by so many Cornish and Devonshire families; and there were ruddy cheese, snow-white bread, and dainty butter, all prepared by Mary's pretty hands; but there was a shadow upon Greville's brow to-night that even she could not dispel; for while he regretted very bitterly—half savagely, almost—the luxuries to which he had once been accustomed in Belgravian dining-rooms and Pall Mall clubs, the rich entrées and rare wines, Mary—who had also been accustomed to luxury—took her food contentedly, and thought the while of the many men and women and little children—children like her own golden-haired Derval—who had neither dinner nor supper to sit down to.
Her perfect and sublime trust in the conviction that all things were ordered for the best, and her sweet yet strong reliance on God in every way, were certainly touching to Greville, but he failed utterly in falling in with her views, or sharing her content and trustfulness, and when assured by her that thousands and thousands of others were not so well off in worldly matters as themselves, he failed also to find any ground for complacency in any such statistics; and so, whether it was the influence of his golden dream, or of his general discontent, on this night, his broad open brow, his firm lips, and dark eyes, wore that peculiar expression which they did at times, and which we have said was certainly not a pleasing one, when he deemed himself to be haunted by his evil destiny—the Demon of Impecuniosity.
Mary left nothing undone or untried to add to his comforts, and he knew that her beautiful and delicate hands had often done, and had yet to do, rougher work than they were ever intended for, though it was often done in secret, to prevent him from seeing it; but Patty Fripp knew of it well.