one level space of about half an acre; the rest was knoll, crag, mound, and rift, a natural garden full of waving birch, shrubs, evergreens, and flowers all growing in wild luxuriance, with myrtle, fuchsia, hydrangea, and geranium, developing into trees more than plants, showing how sheltered the place must be, how warm and suited to their lives. There was no ugly fence, but moss and ivy covered walls of rugged stone, placed here and there as a protection from wandering sheep, while on the level patch, quaintly built of limestone, thatched, porched with rugged wood, its windows embayed, and the whole covered with wistaria, myrtle, and creeping plants, which fought for a hold upon the walls, stood a cottage, out of whose porch Dinah Gurdon, pale of face, anxious-looking, and troubled, came slowly down.
“Welcome to the wilderness, Mr Reed,” said the Major, smiling sadly, as he noted the young man’s enthusiastic look of admiration; and then frowning slightly as he saw a wondering look when the figure in white came toward them from the porch. “My daughter, sir. Dinah, my child, I bring a guest to partake of our poor hospitality this evening. Don’t look so pale and frightened, my dear. Mr Reed is, I am glad to say, a deceiver. There was no cause for alarm, and his aspect is only due to a long journey underground. He is not hurt.”
“I – I am very glad,” said Dinah, holding out her hand, which was eagerly taken, and then shrinking as she encountered Clive Reed’s eager look. “The men brought such startling news.”
“That we were prepared to turn your bedroom into a cottage hospital, Mr Reed, and send off twelve miles for a doctor,” said the Major, as he saw his child’s large dark eyes sink beneath their visitor’s gaze, and a couple of red spots begin to glow in her pale cheeks. “Now, Dinah, my child, Mr Reed must be shown to his room, and let’s have your colour back. My daughter is a little unwell, Mr Reed. She was crossing the mountain the other day, coming back from Bedale, and as she passed over one of the ragged pieces by your mine, she had an ugly fall.”
“Not serious, I hope?” said Reed, with a look of interest, and his searching eyes once more met those of the pale, intense countenance before them, eyes so full of shrinking horror and fear, that though he could not read them, Clive Reed wondered at their expression, as a flow of crimson suffused the cheeks, rising right up to the forehead, and then died out, leaving the girl deadly pale.
The Major waited, as if expecting that his child would speak, but as she remained silent, he said gravely —
“No; she assures me that it was not serious, but she came back looking horribly startled. It was quite a shock to the system, from which she has not quite recovered yet. Now, Mr Reed, Martha will show you your room.”
Reed took a step forward, to find Martha, the hardest-looking, harshest-faced woman of forty he had ever seen, waiting to lead the way.
“A fall,” he said, as he stood alone in the prettily furnished bedroom: “alone in the mountains, and no one by to help. I wish I had been there – with Janet, too, of course.”
Dinah Gurdon was at that moment indulging in similar thoughts – naturally omitting Janet – and as she stood nearly opposite a glass, she became aware of her face reflected there, when she turned away with a shiver.
Chapter Eight.
Undermining
“Hallo, Jess, you here?” cried Clive, as he suddenly encountered his brother at Dr Praed’s door in Russell Square.
Jessop Reed started, and in spite of his man-about-town confidence, he looked for the moment confused, but recovered himself directly.
“Might say the same to you,” he retorted. “I thought you were down some hole in the Midlands.”
“But I’ve come up again. Just got here from St. Pancras now. I say, though, what is it? Out of sorts – been to see the Doctor?”
“Eh? Oh no. I’m all right. But I’m in a hurry. See you at dinner.”
“Why, what’s the matter with him?” thought Clive, as his brother hurried away. “Fast life, I suppose. I’ll run in and ask the Doctor before I go up.”
He rang; the Doctor’s confidential man opened the door, and stood back for him to enter.
“Patient with the Doctor, Morgan?”
“No, sir; past his time. Gone on to the hospital. Back soon.”
Clive stared.
“Miss Praed’s in the drawing-room, sir.”
“Oh, all right. I’ll go up,” said Clive; and he began to ascend two steps at a time. “I hope Jess isn’t ill. Disappointed, I suppose, at finding the old man out.” – “Ah, Janet, darling,” he cried, as he entered the drawing-room, to find his fiancée standing with a bouquet in her hand, looking dreamy and thoughtful.
She flushed up as he caught her in his arms and kissed her tenderly, and then frowned slightly, and put on the pouting look of a spoiled child.
“Why, what a bonnie bunch of roses!” he cried. “Let’s have one for a button-hole.”
“No, no,” she said hastily, and a pained look of perplexity crossed Clive’s countenance as she held the bouquet from him. Then with forced playfulness, “Mustn’t be touched.”
“All right,” he cried merrily. “I came round this way so as to see you first, pet. Raced up by the early train this morning.”
“Indeed!” said Janet, raising her eyebrows; “been in Derbyshire, have you not?”
“My darling!”
“Well, one knows so little of your movements now.”
“Oh, I say, Janet dear, don’t be hard upon a poor busy fellow. You know why I am away so much. All for your sake, pet,” he whispered earnestly; “to make ourselves thoroughly independent, and you a home of which you may be proud.”
There was a slight catching in Janet Praed’s breath, as she said jerkily, and with a show of flippancy, to hide the emotion from which she suffered, for self-accusation was busy with her just then, and a pang or two shot through her as she contrasted the frank, honest manner of her betrothed, and his words, so full of simple honest affection, with others to which she had in a foolish, half-jealous spirit listened again and again —
“Oh yes, I know,” she said, curling up her pretty lip, and speaking hastily to hide her feelings; “but you might have called.”
“Now, Janet, love, don’t tease me. How could I, dear?”
“Well, then, you might have written. A whole week away and not a line.”
“Gently, my own darling, judge, guide, and counsellor in one,” he cried warmly. “I might have written, and ought to have written, but I have been, oh so busy all day, and when I got back to quarters, there was the Major to talk to me, and I could not slight Miss Gurdon.”
“The Major – Miss Gurdon? May I ask who these people are?”
“Oh, a very jolly old sort of fellow, who lives close to the mine, with an only daughter. He insisted upon my staying there while I was down, and I wasn’t sorry; for – O Janet! let me whisper it in your lovely little shell of an ear,” he continued playfully – “the miner’s cottage I slept at one night was not comfortable; it was grubby, and oh, those fleas! If it had not been for my stout walking-stick –
