“Seven long, weary years, Mr. Curran,” she said. “Seven years of waiting and hoping and struggling—everything, as it seemed, against us.”
Then she told me something of hers and Nick’s story; of the wrongful accusation and unjust sentence; of its remission, and of his efforts to earn sufficient money to pay her passage out, so that they might marry and work together.
But people wouldn’t believe in Nick’s innocence, and in spite of what he had done, there was a prejudice against employing him. Then, she said, luck had been altogether against Nick.
Just when he was getting on, his little savings had been lost; and then he had had a bad illness, and for a very long while she had heard nothing, and had been almost wild with anxiety.
Letters had miscarried, and at one time she had almost believed that he had forgotten her. But two years before he had written to tell her that he had his health again, and that he would never rest until he could make her his wife. And then had come a letter telling her, that he had found gold and would be a rich man—a letter enclosing a sum for her expenses to Australia.
“It seems like a dream,” she said. “I wake of nights, and I can’t believe, that, in a little while, I shall see my Nick again. And then I get afraid that he may be disappointed in me, and find that, while he has risen, I have sunk. For I am only a poor girl, and I’ve led a hard life.
“It was all right, while I was in the Children’s Hospital, and I think they would have made almost a lady of me there; but Miss Challice died, and her brother was removed to another place, and things went wrong, and one day I found,” she went on, “that I was turned out without a penny in the world.
“I don’t know how I managed. I got into a factory and worked there, and after a bit, I got easier work, but I could never save enough to be of any use. Ah, Mr. Curran, if you knew how Nick and I have loved each other, and how we have looked forward to this meeting, you wouldn’t grudge us our happiness.”
It went to my heart, and touched all the best part of me, that girl’s way of taking my disappointment.
She seemed to think it was her fault, and that she ought to have told me at the first.