“I do what you wish,” continued Rowton, tugging at his moustache as he spoke; “I keep up this horrible farce, this tragedy of comedy, I put my powers, my genius, at your command, I blind the county and you can do your cursed will, provided you leave that lad of mine alone.”
CHAPTER XX.
A BLACK DIAMOND.
Early the next morning Rowton returned home. Nance was standing in the garden when she suddenly saw her husband cross the lawn; he had walked over from Pitstow. Nancy, whose face was very pale, and under whose eyes were large black shadows, looked, when she suddenly beheld his face, as if a ray of the spring had got into her heart. She uttered an almost inarticulate cry of joy, and sprang into his arms.
“At last,” she panted, “at last. Oh! how cruelly I have missed you.”
“And I you, sweetheart,” he answered. “Let us forget the past now we are together again.”
“Yes, at last,” she panted. She laid her head on his breast. Her happiness was so intense that her breath came fast and hurriedly.
“Look me in the face, little woman,” said Rowton. “Why darling, you are changed; how thin you have got, and your eyes so big—too big. What is it, Nancy?”
“I have been starving,” said Nancy.
“Ah, I might have guessed,” he said, clasping her again to him. “Well, I have returned. I, too, have starved and suffered; but this is plenty after famine. Kiss me, Nance, kiss me many times.”