He made a little pause before the last two words, as if some passing thought had troubled him.
'You know that I love you, Churchill,' she answered, shyly. 'I could not keep that secret from you the other day, though I would have given so much to hide the truth.'
'And you will be my wife, darling, the fair young mistress of Penwyn?'
'By and by, Churchill. It seems almost wrong to talk of our marriage yet awhile. That poor young fellow, your cousin, he may have been asking some happy girl to share his fortune and his home—to be mistress of Penwyn—only a little while ago.'
'Very sad,' said Churchill, 'but the natural law. You remember what the father of poets has said—"The race of man is like the leaves on the trees."'
'Yes, Churchill, but the leaves fall in their season. This poor young fellow has been snatched away in the blossom of his youth—and by a murderer's hand.'
'I have heard a good deal of that sort of talk since his death,' remarked Mr. Penwyn, with a cloudy look. 'I thought you would have a warmer greeting for me than lamentations about my cousin. But for his death I should not have the right to hold you in my arms, to claim you for my wife. You rejected me on account of my property; yet you bewail the event that has made me rich.'
Miss Bellingham withdrew herself from her lover's arms with an offended look.
'I would rather have waited for you ten years than that fortune should have come to you under such painful circumstances,' she said.