“Sir!” interrupted Agnes, with indignation.

“Pardon me,” continued Richard, gently; “I see you do not love him.  I am deeply grieved, for the sake of this poor lad, who is as devoted to you as ever, to find it so, and to feel that it was in part my fault.  I will ask him to forgive me if he can.”

“Nay, Mr. Balfour, I beseech you, don’t do that,” cried Agnes, with crimson cheeks.

“As you please,” murmured he, gravely.  “But, remember, a few days hence, or perhaps a few hours, and I may be beyond his forgiveness.  It will then rest with you, young lady, to clear my memory.  You are not angry with me—­you can not be vexed with a dying man.”

“No, no.”  She was sobbing violently; her heart was touched, not only by his own condition, as she would have had him believe, but by these confidences respecting Charley.  There is nothing more dear to a young girl than the testimony of another man to her lover’s fealty; the witness himself is even guerdoned with some payment of the rich store he bears; and from that moment Balfour was not only forgiven by Agnes, but even beloved by her.

CHAPTER XLIX.

REST AT LAST.

That the termination of Richard’s malady would be fatal did not from the first admit of doubt, but he lingered on beyond all expectation.  The spring came on and found him yet alive at Gethin.  He was never moved from the room to which he had been carried after his mischance—­the same which had been his bedroom in the old times, when he was full of strength and vigor—­wherein he had so often lain awake, revolving schemes to win his Harry, or slept and dreamed of her.  The comparison of his “now” and “then” was melancholy enough, but it was not bitter.  His pain was great, but not out of proportion to his comfort.  He had still Harry’s love, and he had even that of two other hearts besides, which he had reconciled and drawn together.  In him Charles had had an unwearying advocate with Agnes, and at last he had won his cause.  She had been driven to take refuge in her last intrenchment—­her poverty—­and Richard had made that untenable.

“You will not be an heiress, perhaps, my dear,” he had said to her, “though you deserve to be one; but neither will you be undowered.  I have left you all I have.  Nay, it is not much—­a few score acres by the sea—­but they will soon be yours.”

She had accepted them unwillingly, and under protest; but a day came when it became necessary for her to remonstrate with the sick man once again concerning this matter, sorry as she was to thwart or vex him; she therefore requested, to have a few minutes’ talk alone with him.

“Dear Mr. Balfour,” said she, gently, “I am going to disobey you in once more reopening the matter of your kind bequest.  Something has happened which has given the affair a wholly different aspect.  Among the visitors yesterday to that dreadful mine, to which people still flock, there was a Mr. Stratum—­a young engineer, it seems, of some reputation; and in his researches in Wheal Danes they say he has hit upon a great treasure, or what may turn out to be such.”