Mark read this letter to Tom, who said after a moment, “She is a splendid girl. I don’t think she takes after her mother.”
“Or her father, either,” Mark rejoined.
“Where does she get her lovely traits of character?” was Tom’s next remark, and for the first time since Inez died a smile broke over Mark’s face, as he replied, “It must be from ’Tina. From all descriptions I have had of that unfortunate lady Fanny looks like her.”
“I guess she does,” Tom said, then added, “I am glad the diamonds reached her safely. That chapter is closed and a great weight off my mind. I wonder if Inez knows?”
“Of course she does, and is glad as we are,” was Mark’s reply, and the diamonds were never mentioned again between them.
Mark was failing, and after he knew the diamonds were safe with Fanny, he began to go down rapidly.
“I feel as if I had been broken on the rack until every joint was loosened and every nerve crushed,” he said to Tom. “There is nothing to live for. Inez is dead; I shall never see Fanny again, and it is better so. But I do long for the hills and ponds of Ridgefield and Uncle Zach and Dotty. Do you think they’d be glad to see me? They don’t know what I am. Nobody knows but you and me.”
Tom wasn’t so sure about Roy. He believed that young man had his suspicions, and was equally sure he would keep them to himself.
“I know Uncle Zach and Dotty would be glad to see you, and in the spring we will go there,” he said to Mark, who, buoyed up with this hope, counted the weeks as they passed away, knowing the while that his strength was slipping from him and leaving him so weak that he staid all day in his room where Tom came every night to see him, and Mark, who had forgotten all the blame he had ever attributed to him, clung to him, as if he had been his son.
“I shan’t go to Ridgefield. I’ve given that up,” he said to Tom one day in March. “It’s the cottage now in the valley I want to see. How soon do you think we can go there?”