“I can’t tell any one that, but it has to do with an estate.”
The girl drank his words in. The little imagination she had was always attracted by a mystery, and the very vagueness of his story only served to impress her more.
“Then is Kent your real name?” she asked.
“No—no, it isn’t. But I have had to take it for business purposes. You haven’t forgotten that you promised to tell no one you had seen me. You will keep your word, Isoline?”
“Oh, certainly,” she exclaimed fervently, “I should be afraid to say anything after what you have told me. I might get into trouble, mightn’t I?” she added naïvely.
“And I might have to go to prison,” he said, speaking the exact truth. “You would be sorry for that, wouldn’t you, Isoline?”
“Oh, really I should. How dreadful!” she exclaimed.
At this his heart thrilled; he had no idea how the words “Crown” and “Government” had exalted him in her eyes. The pedestal upon which he had raised her was so high that he never supposed she could see down into the sordid world beneath her. Poor Rhys! the spiritual part of him was small, a feeble spark hidden deep in the darkness of selfishness, but Isoline had struck it with her little worthless hand, and it had flickered up.
After leaving her he went back to the cottage in a state of rapture, for she had promised to return. Like Harry at Waterchurch, he was wakeful with thoughts of her, but, unlike him, he went out into the night, and spent it rambling among the shoulders of the mountain.
It was dawning when he came home and locked himself in for the coming day, and the place was so cheerless that he almost missed George. He wondered what had become of him as he went down the ladder and threw himself on his bed. The underground room was now half filled with things which he had carried below after his companion had left him, and the mattress and other possessions belonging to the sheep-stealer furnished his prison, and made it a little more habitable. The impossibility of having a fire tried him in the cold weather, for the place was chilly with the damp of the surrounding earth, and he dared not during the day kindle the smallest flame in the fire-place, for fear that, by some fraction of a chance, some one might pass, and observe the uncommon spectacle of smoke issuing from an empty house.