Delilah of the Snows Part 55

Ingleby stood silent a moment. "If you had loved me, you would never have betrayed me. I am afraid it is."

Grace looked at him steadily, with the colour in her cheeks, and her voice was a little tremulous.

"Perhaps I wouldn't--like you, I do not know." Then she held out her hand. "Don't think too hardly of me. Good-bye, Walter."

Ingleby touched her fingers, for he dared not trust himself further, and swinging his shapeless hat off abruptly turned away, while Grace stood very still until the shadows of the pines closed about him. That was the last she ever saw of him.

It was half an hour later when he walked quietly into the bakery, and came upon Hetty getting her few belongings together.

"I have come back--to the people and the place I belong to. You will not turn me out?" he said.

Hetty's eyes shone softly. "We have been waiting for you, Walter--we knew you would come. Still, I'm not sure you can ever get quite back to where you were before."

Ingleby saw her meaning, for he remembered the locket; and it seemed that Hetty knew what he was thinking, for a little colour crept into her face.

"Well," he said, "I will be patient, and try very hard."

Then he heard footsteps, and, going out, met Leger at the door. The latter turned and came down the trail with him.

"We are taking the trail to-morrow. Are you coming with us?" he said.

"Of course!" said Ingleby, looking at him in blank astonishment.

"In that case there is something to be said--and it is difficult, but Hetty is my sister, after all. Do you know who gave her that locket?"

"I did," said Ingleby, "a long while ago, but I never fancied that she had kept it. Tom, I do not know what your sister thinks of me, but she can't think more hardly of me than I do. Still, there may be one or two other colossal idiots of my description."

"It's quite likely," said Leger drily. "That, however, isn't very much to the point, is it?"

Ingleby stood silent a moment. "Tom," he said, "as you found out, it's difficult--and I don't understand the thing myself. Perhaps Miss Coulthurst dazzled me, and I've been off my balance ever since I came into this valley, but I know now that if I ever marry anybody it will be Hetty. That's a very indifferent compliment to your sister. She will probably be a very long while forgiving me, but I may, perhaps, at last persuade her to believe in me again. Now, are you going to turn me away?"

"No," said Leger. "After that I fancy we can face together what comes."

It was early next morning when they left the valley with an escort of twenty miners to help them across the divide, and Hetty stood by Ingleby's side when they turned for a moment to look back from among the climbing pines. Then, as they turned again, Ingleby met the girl's clear eyes.

"It may be a long while, Hetty, but I think I shall get quite back, after all," he said. "It was in ever wanting to go away that I was horribly wrong."

THE END