'What, darling?'
'May never rise.'
'Would I be a true woman if I forsook you because you were unfortunate?'
'No; but you are more than a woman, Dulcie—you are a golden-haired angel!'
'My poor Florian, how gaunt and hollow your cheeks are! You have suffered——'
'Much since last we parted here in dear old Devonshire. But Shafto's villainy surpasses all I could have imagined!'
'And where is Shafto now?'
'With his grand relations, I suppose. I am glad that we have unravelled that which was to me a source of sorrow and dismay—the returned locket. So you cannot take back your heart, Dulcie, nor give me mine?' said Florian.
'Nor would I wish to do so,' she replied, sweetly and simply. 'Though poor, we are all the world to each other now.'
'Hard and matter-of-fact as our every-day existence is, there is—even in these railway times—much of strange and painful romance woven up with many a life; and so it seems to be with mine—with ours, Dulcie.'