Soon the great valley lay below us, running out in a golden haze to the far blue mountains.
"Ah!" she sighed, like one who comes from a winter night into a firelit room. She was silent, while her eyes drank in its spacious comfort.
"That is your heritage, Elspeth. That is the birthday gift to which old
Studd's powder-flask is the key."
"Nay, yours," she said, "for you won it."
The words died on her lips, for her eyes were abstracted. My legs were still feeble, and I had leaned a little on her strong young arm as we came up the hill, but now she left me and climbed on a rock, where she sat like a pixie. The hardships of the past had thinned her face and deepened her eyes, but her grace was the more manifest. Fresh and dewy as morning, yet with a soul of steel and fire—surely no lovelier nymph ever graced a woodland. I felt how rough and common was my own clay in contrast with her bright spirit.
"Elspeth," I said hoarsely, "once I told you what was in my heart."
Her face grew grave. "And have you not seen what is in mine?" she asked.
"I have seen and rejoiced, and yet I doubt."
"But why?" she asked again. "My life is yours, for you have preserved it. I would be graceless indeed if I did not give my best to you who have given all for me."
"It is not gratitude I want. If you are only grateful, put me out of your thoughts, and I will go away and strive to forget you. There were twenty in the Tidewater who would have done the like."