While she chattered on, Mrs. Cline got Berry to lie down on her little white couch for her much-needed rest, and then she went out to see to the packing up of her household goods, preparatory to giving up the cottage to another tenant.
Many tears fell as she moved about her work with the assistance of her yellow-faced Chinese boy of all work, for she had come here a bride, eighteen years ago, and fondly hoped to spend her life in the cottage with Sam. But fate had willed otherwise, and with a sad heart she prepared to go.
But not for all that did Mrs. Cline repent for one moment her kindness to Mr. Charley and his bonnie bride, although that had got her into trouble with the master and banishment from Bonair.
“I’d do the same thing over again, if I knew beforehand what was going to happen!” she vowed stoutly.
CHAPTER XXVII.
FORGETTING THE WORLD.
The time is late summer on the bleak coast of Cornwall, a year and three months since the day when Charley Bonair walked out of the courtroom in San Francisco, cleared of the charge of insanity brought by his nearest and dearest relatives, and freed by the efforts of the man who had loved Berry so loyally that his friendship became her stay in the time of her sore need.
Grateful to those who had befriended him, embittered by persecution, Charley Bonair and his lovely bride had exiled themselves within a week after his acquittal on the charge of insanity. The young man still had some means left, and gathering everything together, he sailed for foreign shores with Berry, having first instructed a lawyer to attend to the rights of his inheritance from his mother when the property was divided, on his sister’s coming of age.
That was long ago, and many things had transpired in that time.
To begin with, the disinherited son, never used to economy before, had recklessly spent the funds he had in hand, traveling expensively, showing Berry the wonders of the Old World, and answering to her timid remonstrances on his extravagance that he had plenty to last six months, and by then Marie would come of age and he would get his portion of five hundred thousand dollars from his mother.
And, oh, the days, the weeks, the months, how happily they had gone to the young pair of married lovers!