"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 passed 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 passion 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 sturdy 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.