Away ran the light-footed girl, ever ready to render a service to the old man, and to shield Gilbert from blame. In a few minutes she returned, with the missing article in her hand.
The farmer watched her as she came up, and a deep regretful sigh burst from his lips.
"Well, 'tis a bonny lass. I don't blame Gilbert much for loving the like o' her. She is pretty enough, and good enough, to be my daughter—but, then,—her mother. God knows what she may have been—and what's bred in the bone, they say, is hard to get out of the flesh. She was handsome too—if she had not been so wasted with misery—though the girl is no more like her than I am like the moon. She was fair as a lily, with bright golden hair, and bore no resemblance to this dark-eyed, black-browed wench. If I could only think that she had been an honest woman, I should not care. But there's the difficulty. My Mary thinks me a hard-hearted man. I know she does, and that I have acted unkindly by Dolly, but I have done it for the best, and she will think as I do by and by. It is right that she should quit. I have kept her these many years for naught. She can now take care of herself."
"Father, I am going. May God bless and reward you for all your kindness to me," said Dolly, with quivering lips, as she dropped the piece of harness at his feet.
"Stop," cried Rushmere, putting his hand into his pocket, and drawing forth a heavy yellow leathern bag, "you must not leave me without a penny in your purse, to buy you a night's lodging," and he slipped three guineas into her hand, and drew her towards him and kissed her.
Dorothy's first impulse was to return the gold. She thought better of it. The sum was not large, and he could afford to give it, and she had honestly earned every fraction of it. She might want a little money; she had none of her own, so she thanked him heartily for his gift, bade him good bye, and walked away as fast as she could, to hide her tears.
Her path to Mrs. Barford's farm lay down the sandy lane, and then back of the house, six miles over the heath in a westerly direction, and away from the coast.
The morning was pretty far advanced, and she could not reach her place of destination before noon. She had many misgivings in her mind about these Barfords, and what sort of reception she was likely to receive from them.
She did not know much about them. She had seen and spoken with them occasionally, both at market and at church. They were a grade below the Rushmeres; were without even the plain education that she had received at the village school, and spoke the common dialect of the county. Mrs. Barford had held a better position, she had heard her mother say, but she had made a low marriage—her son a lower one still; and though the farm was good, and they enjoyed a tolerable competence, they were not received into the society of the yeomen of a better class. They were no favourites with Gilbert, who had pronounced them decidedly vulgar—a common term of reproach in the mouths of persons who have themselves no great claims to gentility.