"Elsie," I answered quietly, "I am ready to give you time, all the time you need to prove me, and my love for you, though there is no need. My heart is yours, and yours only, ever from the time I saw you. I have never even wavered in my faith and hope. But I do not care so long as I may be near you—so long as I may see you sometimes, and speak to you. For without you I shall be wretched, and would be glad even if that wretched Malay were to kill me, as he threatened."
I thought I was cunning to bring in Matthias, and indeed she lifted her eyes then. But she showed no signs of fear for me. Perhaps she looked at me, saying to herself there was no need of such a strong man being afraid of such a visionary danger. She spoke after a little silence.
"Then let it be so, Mr. Ticehurst. If what you say be true, there at least is nothing for you to fear."
She looked at me straight then with her glorious blue eyes, and I would have given worlds to catch her in my arms and press her to my heart. She went on:
"And if you never give me cause, why—" She was silent, but held out her hand.
I took it, pressed it, and would have raised it to my lips, only she drew it gently away. But I went to rest happy that night. Give her cause!—indeed, what cause could I give her? That is what I asked myself, without knowing what was coming, without feeling my ignorance, my blindness, and my helplessness in the strange web of fate and fated crime which was being woven around me—without being conscious, as an animal is in the prairie, of that storm, so ready to burst on my head, whose first faint clouds had risen on the horizon of my life, even before I had seen her, in the very hour that I had joined the Vancouver under my own brother's command. I went to sleep, wondering vaguely what had become of him. But we are blind, all of us, and see nothing until the curtain rises on act after act; being ignorant still, whether the end shall be sweet or bitter to us, whether it shall justify our smiles in happiness, or our tears in some bitter tragedy.
For two days I worked in and about my house, putting things in some order, and on the third I rode over to the Flemings' early in the morning, as it had been arranged that I was to go out with Mr. Fleming to look after some cattle of his, which a neighbor had complained of. I never felt in better spirits than when I rode over the short two miles which separated us, for the morning was calm and bright, with a touch of that glorious freshness known only among mountains or on high plateaus lifted up from the common level of the under world. I even sang softly to myself, for the black cloud of doubt, which but a few days ago had obscured all my light, was driven away by a new dawning of hope, and I was content and without fear. I shouted cheerfully for Fleming as I rode up, and he came to the door with his whip over his arm, followed by the two girls. I alighted, and shook hands all round.
"Then you are ready, Mr. Fleming?" I asked.
"When I have put the saddle on the black horse," he replied, as he went toward the stable, leaving me standing there, for I was little inclined to offer to assist him while Elsie remained outside the house. Fanny was quite as mischievous as ever, and whether her sister had told her anything of what had passed between us two days before or not, she was evidently conscious that the relations between Elsie and myself had somehow altered for the better.
"How do you find yourself these days, Tom?" she asked, with a merry twinkle in her eye.