Devine, and the thin paper crackled under her tightening fingers as she read:--

"I have been alone since I last wrote you, as Grant had to go up to the Dayspring suddenly and has not come back. There was, I understand, a big flood in the valley above the mine, and Brooke, it seems, was very seriously hurt when endeavoring to protect the workings. I don't understand exactly how it happened, though I surmise from Grant's letters that he did a very daring thing. He is now in the Vancouver hospital, for although Grant wished him brought here, the surgeon considered him far too ill to move. His injuries, I understand, are not very serious in themselves, but it appears that the man was badly worn out and run down when he sustained them, and his condition, I am sorry to say, is just now very precarious."

The rest of the letter concerned the doings of Barbara's friends in Vancouver, but the girl read no more of it, and sat still, a trifle white in the face, with her hands trembling, until Hetty turned to her.

"You don't look well," she said. "I hope nothing has happened to your sister or Mr. Devine?"

"No," said Barbara, quietly, though there was a faint tremor in her voice. "They are apparently in as good health as usual."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Hetty, with an air of relief. "There is, of course, n.o.body else, or I should have known it, though you really seem a trifle paler than you generally do. Shall we go in and look through these patterns? I have been writing up about some dress material, and they've sent cuttings. Still, I don't suppose you will want anything new for Mrs. Cruttenden's?"

"No," said Barbara, in a voice that was almost too even now, and not in keeping with the tension in her face. "In fact, I'm not going at all."

Hetty glanced at her sharply, and then made a little gesture of comprehension.

"Very well!" she said. "Whenever you feel it would be any consolation you can tell me, but in the meanwhile I have no doubt that you can get on without my company."

She moved away, and Barbara, who was glad to be alone, sat still, for she wished to set her thoughts in order. This was apparently the climax all that had pa.s.sed that afternoon had led up to, but she was just then chiefly conscious of an overwhelming distress that precluded any systematic consideration of its causes. The man whom she had roused from his lethargy at the Quatomac ranch was now, she gathered, dying in the Vancouver hospital, but not before he had blotted out his offences by slow endurance and unwearying effort in the face of flood and frost. She would have admitted this to him willingly now, but the opportunity was, it seemed, not to be afforded her, and the bitter words with which she had lashed him could never be withdrawn. She who had shown no mercy, and would not afford him what Major Hume had termed another chance, must, it seemed, long for it in vain herself.

By degrees, however, her innate resolution rose against that decision, and she remembered that it was not, in point of time, at least a very long journey to British Columbia. There was nothing to prevent her setting out when it pleased her; and then it occurred to her that the difficulties would be plentiful at the other end. What explanation would she make to her sister, or the man, if--and the doubt was horrible--he was, indeed, still capable of receiving it? He had never in direct speech offered her his love, and she had not even the excuse of the girl who had given Reggie Ferris up for throwing herself at his feet. She was not even sure that she could have done it in that case, for her pride was strong, and once more she felt the hopelessness of the irrevocable.

She had shown herself hard and unforgiving, and now she realized that the man she loved--and it was borne in upon her, that in spite of his offences she loved him well--was as far beyond her reach as though he had already slipped away from her into the other world at whose shadowy portals he lay in the Vancouver hospital.

There had been a time, indeed the occasion had twice presented itself, when she could have relented gracefully, but she could no longer hope that it would ever happen again, and it only remained for her to face the result of her folly, and bear herself befittingly. It would, she realized, cost her a bitter effort, but the effort must be made, and she rose with a tense white face and turned towards the house. Hetty, as it happened, met her in the hall, and looked at her curiously.

"There are, as you may remember, two or three people coming in to dinner," she said. "I have no doubt I could think out some excuse if you would sooner not come down."

"Why do you think that would please me?" said Barbara, quietly.

"Well," said Hetty, a trifle drily, "I fancied you would sooner have stayed away. Your appearance rather suggested it."

Barbara smiled in a listless fashion. "I'm afraid I can't help that,"

she said. "Your friends, however, will presumably not be here for an hour or two yet."

Hetty made no further suggestions, and Barbara moved on slowly towards the stairway. She came of a stock that had grappled with frost and flood in the wild ranges of the mountain province, and courage and steadfastness were born in her, but she knew there was peril in the slightest concession to her gentler nature she might make just then.

What she bore in the meanwhile she told n.o.body, but when the sonorous notes of a gong rolled through the building she came down the great stairway only a trifle colder in face than usual, and immaculately dressed.

x.x.xI.

BROOKE IS FORGIVEN.

It was a pleasant morning, and Brooke lay luxuriating in the sunlight by an open window of the Vancouver hospital. His face was blanched and haggard, and his clothes hung loosely about his limbs, but there was a brightness in his eyes, and he was sensible that at last his strength was coming back to him. Opposite him sat Devine, who had just come in, and was watching him with evident approbation.

"You will be fit to be moved out in a day or two, and I want to see you in Mrs. Devine's hands," he said. "We have a room fixed ready, and I came round to ask when the doctor would let you go."

Brooke slowly shook his head. "You are both very kind, but I'm going back to the Old Country," he said. "Still, I don't know whether I shall stay there yet."

Devine appeared a trifle disconcerted. "We had counted on you taking hold again at the Dayspring," he said. "Wilkins is getting an old man, and I don't know of any one who could handle that mine as you have done. Quite sure there's nothing I could do that would keep you?"

Brooke lay silent a moment or two. He was loth to leave the mine, but during his slow recovery at the hospital a curious longing to see the Old Country once more had come upon him. He could go back now, and, if it pleased him, pick up the threads of the old life he had left behind, though he was by no means sure this would afford him the satisfaction he had once antic.i.p.ated. The ambition to prove his capabilities in Canada had, in the meanwhile, at least, deserted him since his last meeting with Barbara, and he had heard from Mrs. Devine that it would probably be several months before she returned to Vancouver. He realized that it was she who had kept him there, and now she had gone, and the mine was, as Devine had informed him, exceeding all expectations, there was no longer any great inducement to stay in Canada. He had seen enough of the country, and, of late, a restless desire to get away from it had been growing stronger with every day of his recovery. It might, he felt, be easier to shake off the memory of his folly in another land.

"No," he said, slowly, "I don't think there is. I feel I must go back, for a while, at least."

"Well," said Devine, who seemed to recognize that protests would be useless, "it's quite a long journey. I guess you can afford it?"

Brooke felt the keen eyes fixed on him with an almost disconcerting steadiness, but he contrived to smile.

"Yes," he said, "if I don't do it too extravagantly, I fancy I can."

"Then there's another point," said Devine, with a faint twinkle in his eyes. "You might want to do something yonder that would bring the dollars in. Now, I could give you a few lines that would be useful in case you wanted an engagement with one of your waterworks contractors or any one of that kind."

"I scarcely think it will be necessary," said Brooke, with a little smile.

"Well," said Devine, "I have a notion that it's not going to be very long before we see you back again. You have got used to us, and you're going to find the folks yonder slow. I can think of quite a few men who saved up, one or two of them for a very long while, to go home to the Old Country, and in about a month they'd had enough of it. The country was very much as they left it--but they had altered."

He stopped a moment, with a little chuckle, before he continued. "Now, there was Sandy Campbell, who ran the stamps at the Canopus for me. He never spent a dollar when he could help it, and, when he'd quite a pile of them, he told me he was just sickening for a sight of Glasgow. Well, I let him go, and that day six weeks Sandy came round to the mine again.

The Old Country was badly played out, he said, but, for another month, that was all he would tell me, and then the facts came out. Sandy's friends had met him at the Donaldson wharf, and started a circus over the whisky. Somebody broke the furniture, and Sandy doubled up a policeman who, he figured, had insulted him, so they had him up for doing it before whatever they call a magistrate in that country. Sandy's remarks were printed in a Glasgow paper, and he showed it me.

"'Forty shillings. It's an iniquity,' he said. 'Is this how ye treat a man who has come six thousand miles to see his native land? I will not find ye a surety. I'm away back by the first Allan boat to a country where they appreciate me.'"

Brooke laughed. "Still, I don't quite see how Sandy's case applies to me."

"I guess it does. One piece of it, anyway. Sandy knew where he was appreciated, and we have room for a good many men of your kind in this country. That's about all I need say. When you feel like it, come right back to me."

He went out a few minutes later, and Brooke lay still thoughtfully, with his old ambitions re-awakening. There was, he surmised, a good deal of truth in Devine's observations, and work in the mountain province that he could do. Still, he felt that even to make his mark there would be no great gain to him now. Barbara could not forgive him, but she was in England, and he might, at least, see her. Whether that would be wise he did not know, and scarcely fancied so, but the faint probability had its attractions, and he would go and stay there--until he had recovered his usual vigor, at least.

It was, however, a little while before the doctors would permit him to risk the journey, and several months had pa.s.sed when he stood with a kinsman and his wife on the lawn outside an old house in an English valley. The air was still and warm, and a full moon was rising above the beeches on the hillside. Its pale light touched the river, that slid smoothly between the mossy stepping-stones, and the shadows of clipped yew and drooping willow lay black upon the gra.s.s. There was a faint smell of flowers that linger in the fall, and here and there a withered leaf was softly sailing down, but that night it reminded Brooke of the resinous odors of the Western pines, and the drowsy song of the river, of the thunder of the torrent that swirled by Quatomac. His heart was also beating a trifle more rapidly than usual, and for that reason he was more than usually quiet.

"I suppose your friends will come?" he said, indifferently.

Mrs. Cruttenden, who stood close by him, laughed. "To the minute! Major Hume is punctuality itself. I fancy he will be a little astonished to-night."

"I shall be pleased to meet him again. He was to bring Miss Hume?"

"Of course," said Mrs. Cruttenden, with a keen glance at him. "And Miss Heathcote, whom you asked about. No doubt she will be a trifle astonished, too. You do not seem quite so sure that the meeting with her will afford you any pleasure?"

Brooke smiled a trifle grimly. "The most important question is whether she will be pleased to see me. I don't mind admitting it is one that is causing me considerable anxiety."

"Wouldn't her att.i.tude on the last occasion serve as guide?"

Brooke felt his face grow warm under her watchful eyes, but he laughed.

"I would like to believe that it did not," he said. "Miss Heathcote did not appear by any means pleased with me. Still, you see, you sometimes change your minds."

"Yes," said Mrs. Cruttenden, reflectively. "Especially when the person who has offended us has been very ill. It is, in fact, the people one likes the most one is most inclined to feel angry with now and then, but there are circ.u.mstances under which one feels sorry for past severities."