Trevanion’s eyes watched him curiously.
“I want to talk with you about Elenore,” Hastings went on, quietly. “I suppose you know that I love Elenore, Ned?”
Trevanion stepped back a few paces, but he listened intently.
“Do you?” said the lad, simply.
“Do I?” said Hastings, impetuously. “The hardest thing I ever did was to leave her without telling her I loved her. But you can’t ask a girl like that to wait indefinitely, you know. Then, when I found out where I was coming, it seemed as though it might have been meant, after all. And I wanted to patch up the trouble between the mines, so that I’d have at least a fair chance.”
“And then?” said young Carrington, softly.
“Then,” said Hastings, recklessly, “I hoped—I was daft enough to dream—that she might not think it a hardship to come back to the little place where she was born—to her father—to me. To me! And when I talked of building a bungalow, I thought what it would mean to bring my wife home to it.”
There was silence. Then Hastings shrugged his shoulders.
“I may not have the chance to tell Elenore,” he said, bruskly, half-ashamed of the emotion he had displayed. “It’s not quite the same thing to tell you, old man. I’m afraid there’s small chance of our ever being brothers-in-law, but you wouldn’t have objected to me as a brother, would you?”
“Whatever Elenore wished, I should have wished,” the lad said, calmly.