“You are ill, Mrs. Charlton. You must be getting a touch of fever. Let me take you home.”
“No,” she answered quickly; “let me stay here. I shall be better in a minute.” And then she began to sob passionately.
Charlton, awakening from his drunken sleep, looked at them from the window of the sitting-room. He hated his wife because she feared him, and of late had almost shuddered when he touched her. Picking up his whip from the table, he walked out of the house to where she was sitting.
“So this is your little amusement, is it?” he said savagely to Nina; “and this fellow is the cause of all my trouble. I might have known what to expect from a woman like you. Your Portuguese nature is too much for you. Go back to the house, and leave me to settle with your lover.”
The next instant Lester launched out and struck him on the mouth. He lay where he fell, breathing heavily, and when he rose to his feet he saw Lester carrying his wife, who had fainted, to the house.
Placing Mrs. Charlton in the care of a servant, Lester returned quickly to where Charlton, who was no coward, awaited him.
“You drunken scoundrel!” he burst out; “I've come back to settle up with you!”
And Lester did “settle up” to his heart's content, for he half-killed Charlton with his own whip.
A week later, however, Charlton had his first bit of revenge. Lester was dismissed, the directors of the mine being determined, as they said, to show their disapproval of his attack upon “a justice of the peace and one of their largest shareholders.”
Lester sat down and wrote to the “girl of his heart,” and told her that he could not see her for another year or so. “I have had to leave the mine, Nell, dear,” he said. “I won't tell you why—it would anger you perhaps. But it was not all my fault. However, I have decided what to do. I am going back to my old vocation of pearler in Torres Straits. I can make more money there than I could here.”