Dinah rose and drew back into the doorway, looking at him with contempt.

"Is this part of some melodrama, Mr Jessop Reed?" she said, "or do you imagine that you are speaking to a weak rustic girl?"

"I am speaking the truth--blunderingly, perhaps," he cried excitedly, "but in the best way I can. I wonder that I am not dumb before you.

How can you be so cruel. You must have seen how you impressed me when I was down here before. That feeling has grown into an overpowering pa.s.sion. Dinah Gurdon," he cried, catching her hand, "I came down hereto live--to love you. I cannot help it."

"And you know that I am your brother's betrothed," she said wildly.

"I know that without doubt he has taken advantage of his position here to try and delude you, as he has deluded other poor girls again and again; but you must know the truth. He is not fit to touch your hand-- no, not even to stand in your presence. Hush! let me speak. I know all this is cruelly sudden, but you would forgive me if you knew what I have suffered since I saw you last. Dinah, dearest Dinah, give me some little ray of hope to take away with me. You are too beautiful to be cruel--too gentle to send me away despairing. Ah, you are relenting! A word only, and I will go away patiently, and ready to wait till you know me better."

"I never could know you better than I do at present," said Dinah firmly, and quietly withdrawing her hand.

"Ah, then I may hope?" he cried.

"For what, sir?--an increase in my feeling of contempt? Your brother spared you, but I formed my own estimate of your nature, and it is true."

"I--I don't understand you," he whispered, "only that your words give me intense pain."

"I know, too, my father's estimate of your character. Shall I tell you what he said?"

"If you will. It is joy to hear you speak," he cried, as he tried to catch her hand again.

"He said, sir, that you were a scoundrel."

"Of course," cried Jessop, with a bitter laugh, "from my brother's slanders."

"Did your brother slander you when he told me that you married his betrothed?" cried Dinah indignantly, her eyes speaking her disgust.

"Should I slander you, sir, if I told you that your words to me--words from a married man, to one whom you know to be his promised wife, are an insult? Have the goodness to go, sir, before my father returns, or I will not be answerable for the consequences. Ah!"

She rushed past Jessop, forcing him on one side, for the Major, warned by Robson, had hurried back, and was coming up the path with his stick quivering in his grasp.

"Don't--don't, father," she panted in her excitement, "for my sake. I have said enough."

The Major's face was purple with anger, but he did not speak, only raised his quivering stick, and pointed down toward the pathway, while Dinah clung to his arm.

Jessop shrugged his shoulders, uttered a contemptuous laugh, and calmly took out his case, selected and lit a cigar, closed the case with a snap, pocketed it, and walked by them smoking, insultingly contriving to send a puff of tobacco into the Major's face as he pa.s.sed.

The next minute he was on the shelf path with his face convulsed with fury; and he walked on backward toward the mine, biting off pieces of the cigar, and spitting them out savagely.

"That's it, is it?" he snarled. "Well, we can soon tame all that. He won't come back here, and all that is vapour. Pretty indignation; but a woman is weak. She knows I want her, and she'll dream about it, and grow softer till the siege comes to an end. For it shall come to an end, and in my way, my lady. I never fairly attacked a girl yet without winning; and my pretty, sweet darling shall go on her knees to me yet, and what do you mean by that?"

"I want to talk to you, guv'nor," said Sturgess, who had suddenly clapped him roughly on the shoulder.

"What is it, then? And, confound you, don't you forget your place, sir."

"No fear. I've done your dirty work, and helped you to get your position here."

"And your own," cried Jessop, with a sneer.

"Oh yes, that's all right; but I'm not going to have you ride roughshod over me in every way."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"That you've got to keep away from the cottage yonder. I'm not going to have you poaching on my preserves."

"What do you mean?"

"That Dinah Gurdon's mine--my la.s.s; and that I'd break the neck of any man who came between us two."

Jessop looked at the man in astonishment for a few minutes, and then burst into a mocking laugh.

"You!" he cried. "Oh, this is too rich."

"What!" cried Sturgess, who was black with fury.

"You be d.a.m.ned!" cried Jessop; and rudely thrusting the man aside, making him wince as he touched his wounded arm, strode away.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

IN A FLASH.

It was a curious blending of the bitter and the sweet when Clive Reed came down to the Blinkdale Moor. To a man of his temperament, it was maddening to find himself completely supplanted at the mine--where Jessop reigned supreme, when Wrigley did not come down; and in spite of the past the young engineer would have insisted upon frequent inspection of the place and statements as to the proceedings, but he dared not go, for at his next visit the Major had excitedly told him of all that had taken place with Jessop, and also of Dinah's complaint of insult received from Sturgess.

"I promised her that I would leave it to her to tell, my dear boy, but it's like going into action--one does not care to begin, but the moment one's blood is up, one doesn't know where to stop."

"No," said Clive, with his brow contracting. "The scoundrel, the scoundrel!"

"And that brother of yours is the worst. Why, good heavens, is he mad with conceit as well as brazen wickedness? What does he take my darling for--some silly country wench to whom he has only to throw the handkerchief for her to fall on her knees at his feet?"

"Don't talk about it, please, sir!" cried Clive huskily. "I find that my bad pa.s.sions are stronger than I thought, for I dare not go over to the mine for fear of the scene which would be sure to follow."

"No: you mustn't go, Clive, or you'd half kill him--though he's your own brother. If I had known all when I came back that day, thanks to that young fellow, Robson, I'd have thrashed him till he couldn't stand.

Thirty years older, my boy, but I'm a better man than he is: a miserable, flushed-faced sot! He drinks. I know he does, and he must have been half drunk when he came here that day."

"He will not dare to come again."

"No. Let him take the consequences if he does--him or that black-haired scoundrel, I'll give either of them a charge of shot, I swear."

Still there was the sweet as well as the bitter, during his stays at the cottage; and Clive often asked himself why he, with the large property left to him by his father, should trouble about the mine, when there was a dreamy life of simple, idyllic happiness and joy. No allusion was made to Jessop or Sturgess by either Dinah or her lover, for it was enough that they could be together in that little paradise the Major had in the course of years contrived, wandering hand in hand beside the clear sparkling river which ran on laughing in the sunshine, so stern and calm in the deep shades beneath the rocks. They said little save in the language of the eye, and though Dinah had again and again determined to speak and tell Clive everything--some day when he was seated at her feet holding her hand in his, and say to him, "I dared not tell you lest you should despise me," those words never pa.s.sed her lips. "I cannot tell him now," she sighed to herself. "I am so happy--he looks at me so full of joy and trust. Some day I will, some day when he is holding me tightly in his arms, and I feel so safe. I will tell him then. How can I make him unhappy now?"

So she went on dreaming; happy in the present. The little river valley had never looked so beautiful before, nor her father so restful and content. It was life's summer, a golden time with nothing to wish for more. The storms were hushed to sleep, and like the beautiful streamlet, they two were gliding onward in that mystic peace that softens down the pa.s.sion of a strong first genuine love.

"Bah! I wish there was no London, my boy. No work, no worry, no struggle," cried the Major, one evening, when he was alone with Clive, who had been looking curiously at Martha, and recalling that night when he had first slept at the cottage. He was wondering how it all was.

Whether the st.u.r.dy elderly woman had some love affair. Then he had, in spite of himself, thought of Sturgess, whom he had that day seen crossing one of the hills at a distance. He recalled the Major's words and asked himself whether he, as a man, ought not in his resentment to have taken some step to punish the scoundrel. But with the idea within his mental grasp, he had let it slide again. For why, he asked himself, should he strike and jar the gentle, harmonious life of her who was so happy.

Though the mine was so near, he had only seen his brother and the new deputy manager from time to time, at a distance, and his knowledge of the progress there came either from London or from Robson, who wrote occasionally, always to say that things were miserable, for Jessop and Sturgess were at daggers drawn, but the profits of the mine still rose.

And now a letter had come down from the old lawyer--Mr Belton-- endorsing the clerk's announcements, and saying that an extraordinary meeting was to be held through a movement on the part of Wrigley, and in connection with the advance of the mine under the new management.