“Gad! that’s rich. What a mimic you are. It was the dear old girl to the life. She hasn’t an inkling of the truth, then?”
“Not one. She doesn’t quite approve of you, either. ‘I likes to see a gent more circumpec’, miss, and a trifle more reserved when he’s gettin’ on his thirties. Muckin’ about with a garden fork and such among a trumpery lot of roses, and racin’ here, there, and everywhere over them medders after ferns and things, like a schoolboy on a holiday, aren’t what I calls dignified deportment in full-grown men, and in my day they didn’t use to do it!’ Sometimes I am in mortal terror that she intends to give me notice and to leave me bag and baggage; for she is always saying that she’s ‘sure dear Captain Burbage couldn’t have known what he was a-doing of, poor, innocent, kind-hearted gentleman—and him so much of a gent, too, and so wonderful quiet and sedate!’”
“Poor old girl!” said Cleek, laughing. “What a shock to her if she knew the truth. And what on earth would you do if she were to chance to get a peep at Dollops? But then, of course, there’s no fear of that—the young beggar’s too careful. I told him never to come near the house when he carries any notes.”
“And he never does. Always leaves them under the stone in the path through the woods. I go there, of course, twice every day, and I never know that he has been about until I find one. I am always glad to get them, but to-day’s one made me very, very happy indeed.”
“Because I told you you might expect me?”
“Yes. But not that alone. I think I cried a little and I know I went down on my knees—right there—out in those woods, when I read those splendid words, ‘There is but one more debt to be paid. The “some day” of my hopes is near to me at last.’”
Her voice died off. He uncovered his head, and a stillness came that was not broken by any sound or any movement, until he felt her hand slip into his and remain there.
“Walk with me!” he said, closing his fingers around hers and holding them fast. “Walk with me always. My God! I love you so!”
“Always!” she made answer in her gentle voice; and with her hand shut tight in his, passed onward with him—over the green meadows and into the dim, still woods, and out again into the flower-filled fields beyond, where all the sky was golden after the fierce hues of the sunset had drained away into the tender gleam of twilight, and there was not one red ray left to cross the path of him.
“You have led me this way from the first,” he said, breaking silence suddenly. “Out of the glare of fire, through the dark, into peaceful light. I had gone down to hell but for you—but that you stooped and lifted me. God!”—he threw back his head and looked upward, with his hat in his hand and the light on his face—“God, forget me if ever I forget that. Amen!” he added, very quietly, very earnestly; then dropped his chin until it rested on his breast, and was very still for a long time.