“Indeed!”

“Yes.  He set the men on to save you within ten minutes of the explosion.  He bought rope by the mile, and great iron buckets to carry up the debris that was heaped up between you and the working party.  He raved about the pit day and night lamenting his daughter and his friend; and why I say he saved you, ’twas he who advised Walter.  I had this from Walter himself before his fever came on.  He advised and implored him not to attempt to clear the whole shaft, but to pick sideways into the mine twenty feet from the ground.  He told Walter that he never really slept at night, and in his dreams saw you in a part of the mine he calls the hall.  Now, Walter says that but for this advice they would have been two days more getting to you.”

“We should have been dead,” said Grace, gravely.  Then she reflected.

“Colonel Clifford,” said she, “I listened to that villain and Mr. Bartley planning my father’s destruction.  Certainly every word Mr. Bartley said was against it.  He spoke of it with horror.  Yet, somehow or other, that wretched man obtained from him an order to send the man Burnley down the mine, and what will you think when I tell you that he assisted the villain to hinder me from going to the mine?” Then she told him the whole scene, and how they shut her up in the house, and she had to go down a curtain and burst through a quick-set hedge.  But all the time she was thinking of Walter’s bigamy and how she was to reveal it; and she related her exploits in such a cold, languid manner that it was hardly possible to believe them.

Colonel Clifford could not help saying, “My dear, you have had a great shock; and you have dreamt all this.  Certainly you are a fine girl, and broad-shouldered.  I admire that in man or woman—­but you are so delicate, so refined, so gentle.”

Grace blushed and said, languidly, “For all that, I am an athlete.”

“An athlete, child?”

“Yes, sir.  Mr. Bartley took care of that.  He would never let me wear a corset, and for years he made me do calisthenics under a master.”

“Calisthenics?”

“That is a fine word for gymnastics.”  Then, with a double dose of languor, “I can go up a loose rope forty feet, so it was nothing to me to come down one.  The hedge was the worst thing; but my father was in danger, and my blood was up.”  She turned suddenly on the Colonel with a flash of animation, “You used to keep race-horses, Walter told me.”  The Colonel stared at this sudden turn.

“That I did,” said he, “and a pretty penny they cost me.”

“Well, sir, is not a race-horse a poor mincing thing until her blood gets up galloping?”

“By Jove! you are right,” said he, “she steps like a cat upon hot bricks.  But the comparison is not needed.  Whatever statement Mrs. Walter Clifford makes to me seriously is gospel to me, who already know enough of her to respect her lightest word.  Pray grant me this much, that Bartley is a true penitent, for I have proof of it in this drawer.  I’ll show it you.”