"Shall we go back now?" she said.
"Certainly!—if—if you wish—but isn't it rather nice up here?" he pleaded.
"We'll come another day," and she ran lightly down the first half of the grassy path which had led them to the summit. "But I mustn't waste any more time this afternoon."
"Why? Any pressing demands for mended lace?" asked Angus, as he followed her.
"Oh no! Not particularly so. Only when the firm that employs me, sends any very specially valuable stuff worth five or six hundred pounds or so, I never like to keep it longer that I can help. And the piece I'm at work on is valued at a thousand guineas."
"Wouldn't you like to wear it yourself?" he asked suddenly, with a laugh.
"I? I wouldn't wear it for the world! Do you know, Mr. Reay, that I almost hate beautiful lace! I admire the work and design, of course—no one could help that—but every little flower and leaf in the fabric speaks to me of so many tired eyes growing blind over the intricate stitches—so many weary fingers, and so many aching hearts—all toiling for the merest pittance! For it is not the real makers of the lace who get good profit by their work, it is the merchants who sell it that have all the advantage. If I were a great lady and a rich one, I would refuse to buy any lace from the middleman,—I would seek out the actual poor workers, and give them my orders, and see that they were comfortably fed and housed as long as they worked for me."
"And it's just ten chances to one whether they would be grateful to you——" Angus began. She silenced him by a slight gesture.
"But I shouldn't care whether they were grateful or not," she said. "I should be content to know that I had done what was right and just to my fellow-creatures."
They had no more talk that day, and Helmsley, eagerly expectant, and watching them perhaps more intently than a criminal watches the face of a judge, was as usual disappointed. His inward excitement, always suppressed, made him somewhat feverish and irritable, and Mary, all unconscious of the cause, stayed in to "take care of him" as she said, and gave up her afternoon walks with Angus for a time altogether, which made the situation still more perplexing, and to Helmsley almost unbearable. Yet there was nothing to be done. He felt it would be unwise to speak of the matter in any way to her—she was a woman who would certainly find it difficult to believe that she had won, or could possibly win the love of a lover at her age;—she might even resent it,—no one could tell. And so the days of April paced softly on, in bloom and sunlight, till May came in with a blaze of colour and radiance, and the last whiff of cold wind blew itself away across the sea. The "biting nor'easter," concerning which the comic press gives itself up to senseless parrot-talk with each recurrence of the May month, no matter how warm and beautiful that month may be, was a "thing foregone and clean forgotten,"—and under the mild and beneficial influences of the mingled sea and moorland air, Helmsley gained a temporary rush of strength, and felt so much better, that he was able to walk down to the shore and back again once or twice a a day, without any assistance, scarcely needing even the aid of his stick to lean upon. The shore remained his favourite haunt; he was never tired of watching the long waves roll in, edged with gleaming ribbons of foam, and roll out again, with the musical clatter of drawn pebbles and shells following the wake of the backward sweeping ripple,—and he made friends with many of the Weircombe fisherfolk, who were always ready to chat with him concerning themselves and the difficulties and dangers of their trade. The children, too, were all eager to run after "old David," as they called him,—and many an afternoon he would sit in the sun, with a group of these hardy little creatures gathered about him, listening entranced, while he told them strange stories of foreign lands and far travels,—travels which men took "in search of gold"—as he would say, with a sad little smile—"gold, which is not nearly so much use as it seems to be."