“I do not know; but there it is, locked with a letter padlock which he made himself.  No human being can open it, he says, who does not know the secret.”

Richard was silent.  Something else than love was occupying his thoughts, though his fingers were making marriage rings for themselves of Harry’s golden hair.  It is like entertaining angels unawares to find after one has fallen in love that it is with an heiress.

“Dear Harry,” said he at last, “I think I shall take you from your father’s willing hands; I have good hope of it, and better since I have heard you so despairing; but, at all events, you will be mine.  Let me hear those sweet lips say so.  Promise me, promise me, my darling, that you will be my wife.”

He caught and clasped her close, and she did not repulse him.

“I dare not, Richard—­I dare not promise you,” she murmured.

“But if your father gives me leave?” whispered he, his lips to her warm cheek.

She uttered a soft cry of passionate joy that told him more than a hundred phrases of assent how dear he was to her, and hid her face upon his breast.

Oh happy hour, so bright, and yet so brief!  Oh golden noon, already on the verge of eve and blackest night!

How often in the after-time did that fair and sunny scene recur to them, a bitter memory; how often was that first kiss of love renewed by cruel fancy and in mocking dreams, its sweetness changed to gall!

Better for one—­better, perhaps, for both—­if, clasped in one another’s arms, they had fallen from that tall tower’s top, and then and there had ended life and love together!

CHAPTER XVII.

WORKING ON A PIVOT.

Never had Richard been in such high spirits as on the evening of that day on which Harry had made confession to him of her love, and had promised to be his wife should her father’s consent be gained.  It was true that she had been far from sanguine upon the latter point; but Richard had his reasons for being of a different opinion.  It would be better, every way, if he could obtain Trevethick’s good-will; not that he at all shared in the girl’s dread of his anger, but because it really seemed that if he married her from her father’s roof he should be fulfilling his mother’s injunctions in making alliance with an heiress.  What with his two thousand pounds in gold, and his inn, and his lucky mine, it was plain that the old man would have no despicable sum to leave behind him; and yet, to do Richard justice, this only formed an additional incentive to a project upon which, at all events, he had long set his heart.  He had resolved at all hazards to make the girl his wife.  His love for her was as deep as it was passionate; and now that he was assured from her own lips of its being returned, his heart was filled with joy, and spoke out of its abundance.  It had been hitherto his habit in that family circle round the