"Then never speak," returned she, earnestly, "of what has occurred to-day. Never show by your manner that you feel—as you say—grateful for what service I have been able to be to you. Let not father nor Solomon ever know."
"It will be very hard, Harry, to keep silence—to owe you so great a debt, without acknowledging it," said Richard, tenderly; "but, since such is your wish, I will obey it."
"Thank you, Sir. And now I will go home alone. I was deterred by the wind, the steepness—any thing you please—from accompanying you up yonder; remember that. You will not mind waiting a while behind me?"
"Surely not," said Richard, wonderingly.
And the next moment she had hurried round an angle of the main-land cliff, and was gone.
CHAPTER XIII.
FISHING FOR AN INVITATION.
"What a strange girl!" muttered Richard, as he stood in the same hollowed rock, alone, where Harry and he had first taken shelter. "What a compound of strength and weakness—as my mother says all girls are, though I have never known them strong before! How eager she seemed to part company with me, and how anxious to get home without me—and I am never to speak of what has happened, to her father nor to Solomon! This Solomon is her unwelcome wooer, that is clear. He is neither young nor handsome—nor attractive in any way in her eyes, I reckon. And what a beauty she is, to be thrown away on such a boor!"
The recollection that the door at the top of the rock had been left open, and the key inside it, here flashed upon him. "She will be sorry about that key," he thought; "and glad and grateful to me if I go back and fetch it. The old man will be wroth with her for having trusted a stranger with such a treasure. This Trevethick must be an ingenious fellow, and a long-sighted one, no doubt. It was he who applied to Parson Whymper for a lease of the old mine, if I remember right. Perhaps the chaplain may help me to get it him, for I owe him something for his daughter's sake. The idea of his having such a daughter! What rubbish is this we artists talk of birth and beauty! Neither in life nor on canvas have I ever seen one so fair as this girl." He meditated for a moment, then cried out, angrily: "Heaven curse me, if I harm her! What an ungrateful villain should I be! If there be a Gehenna, and but one man in it, I should deserve to be that man!"
Then he began to climb the rock. He did not tarry this time for breath nor shelter, though the wind had no whit abated, but trod right on till he reached the spot where the catastrophe which had been so near fatal to him had occurred. "It was a narrow escape," mused he, looking down upon the place, not without a slight shudder. "What odd things come into the head when Death is whispering in the ear! If it had not been for my fair guide, where should I have been by this time? Beneath the sea, for certain. But what else? How strange it seems that if there is any 'else,' no one, from the beginning of time till now, of all the millions who have experienced it, should have come back to tell us! And yet there was a man who came back from the grave once. Who was he? I recollect his picture by Haydon; his talk must have been better worth listening to than that of most. Is nothing true that one hears or reads, I wonder? Here is where I kissed her! I wouldn't kiss her again, if I had the chance; I swear I would not. I am a good boy now—all morality, if not religion—for they do say that hell is paved with good intentions—which seems hard. If one is to be punished for one's wicked thoughts—even if they do not bear fruit—it is surely but reasonable that one's good ones—even if never carried into practice—should be set down on the credit side of the ledger."