He took her other hand, and drawing her gently toward him, said:  “Come near to me Miss Grace.  I am involved in a trouble which I never dreamed of when I came here.  Mine has been a harsh life, but I have always tried to meet my fate resignedly.  Now I am overborne.  Since the first hour I met you, first looked into your divine face, first felt your hand-clasp and heard your voice, my heart has been on fire.  You have become my divinity.  I worship you.  Oh, Grace, can you give me a thread, be it ever so slight, out of which I may weave a hope that some time you will bend, and sanctify my life by becoming my wife?”

As he spoke, over the pale face of Grace Meredith an almost imperceptible glow spread, as when an incandescent lamp is lighted under a translucent shade; her eyes grew moist, her lips quivered, she trembled in every limb, and, suddenly dropping on her knees, drew his hands to her lips, kissed them, and murmured:  “O! my king!”

He caught her to him and cried:  “Is it true?  Is it true?  Do you really care for me?”

She looked up and said:  “O, my blind darling, you are so very, very blind!  My soul has been calling to your soul since the first hour you came.”

Half an hour later Grace looked up and with a ravishing smile, said:  “Do you know, dearest, I believe all my heavy-heartedness is gone.”

At last Sedgwick said:  “My beautiful, what will your friends say to your marrying a rough miner?”

“What,” replied she, “will your friends say if you prove foolish enough to marry a simple English girl, whose horizon is bounded by Devonshire and London?”

His response was:  “My adored one!”

Then she crept nearer him, and with serious accent said:  “My love, if happily our lives shall be united, whom will it be for, our friends or ourselves?  I will tell you.  If ever I shall be permitted to become so blessed as to be your wife, it will be with the thought in my heart that we are all in all to each other in this world, and in the world to come.”

“In this world and in the world to come,” he repeated; and then, with bowed head, in a whisper, he added:  “May I be worthy of such a blessing, and God spare to me my idol, that I may praise Him evermore.”

And then they began to talk in earnest.  One hour like that is due to every mortal; no mortal can have more than one such an hour, no matter how long may be his life.

Later they came directly to the subject of their marriage.  They agreed that, if possible, it should be on the same day that Jack and Rose should be married.  But Sedgwick mentioned Mrs. Hamlin’s desire that for the present no one should know of his love or of hers (if it should be returned), and said he believed it best not to mention their relations until the wedding day of Rose and Jack drew near.