"How, sir?" asked Faith, not perceiving what he meant.
"When you spoke of having your hand on the mainspring of all this?"
And he raised his right arm, motioning with the slender whip he held, along the line of factory buildings that lay before them.
A deep, blazing blush burned, at his words, over Faith's cheek and brow. She sat and suffered it under his eye--uttering not a syllable.
"I knew you did _not_ know. You did not think of it so. Yet it is true, none the less. Faith! Are you happy? Are you satisfied?"
Still a silence, and tears gathering in the eyes.
"I do not wish to distress you, my dear. It is only a little word I should like to hear you speak. I must, so far as I can, see that my children are happy, Faith."
"I suppose," said Faith, tremulously, struggling to speech--"one cannot expect to be utterly happy in this world."
"One does expect it, forgetting all else, at the moment when is given what seems to one life's first, great good--the earthly good that comes but once. I remember my own youth, Faithie. Pure, present content is seldom overwise."
"Only," said Faith, still tremblingly, "that the responsibility comes with the good. That feeling of having one's hand upon the mainspring is a fearful one."
"I am not given," said Mr. Rushleigh, "to quoting Bible at all times; but you make a line of it come up to me. 'There is no fear in love. Perfect love casteth out fear.'"
"Be sure of yourself, dear child. Be sure you are content and happy; and tell me so, if you can; or, tell me otherwise, if you must, without a reserve or misgiving," he said again, as they drove down the mill entrance; and their conversation, for the time, came, necessarily, to an end.
Coming into the mill yard, they were aware of a little commotion about one of the side doors.
The mill girl who had fainted sat here, surrounded by two or three of her companions, slowly recovering.
"It is Mary Grover, sir, from up at the Peak," said one of them, in reply to Mr. Rushleigh's question. "She hasn't been well for some days, but she's kept on at her work, and the heat, to-day, was too much for her. She'd ought to be got home, if there was any way. She can't ever walk."
"I'll take her, myself," said the mill owner, promptly. "Keep her quiet here a minute or two, while I go in and speak to Blasland."