ia, who had not imagined this. But still a man
going back to Australia might take a wife with him. She would not object
to the voyage. Her remembrance of the evening on which she had crept
down and put the little book into his valise was so strong that she felt
herself to be justified in being in love with him. 'But not for always?'

'Certainly not;--but just to wind up affairs.'

It would be no more than a pleasant wedding-tour,--and, perhaps, she
could do something for poor Dick. She could take the shirts so far on
their destination.

'Oh, Mr. Caldigate, how well I remember that last night!'

'So indeed, do I,--and the book.' The hardship upon the moth is that
though he has already scorched himself terribly in the flame, and burned
up all the tender fibre of his wings, yet he can't help returning to the
seductions of the tallow-candle till his whole body has become a
wretched cinder. Why should he have been the first to speak of the book?

Of course she blushed, and of course she stammered But in spite of her
stammering she could say a word. 'I dare say you never looked at it.'

'Indeed I did,--very often. Once when Dick saw it in my hands, he wanted
to take it away from me.'

'Poor Dick!'

'But I have never parted with it for an hour!'

'Where is it now?' she asked.

'Here,' said Caldigate, pulling it out of the breast-pocket of his
coat. If he had had the presence of mind to say that he had lent the
book to another young lady, and that she had never returned it, there
might probably have been an end of this little trouble at once. But when
the little volume appeared, just as though it had been kept close to his
heart during all these four years, of course she was entitled to hope.
He had never opened the book since that morning in his cabin, not caring
for the academic beauties of Thomson's 'Seasons;'--had never looked at
it till it had occurred to him as proper that he should take it with him
to Pollington. Now he brought it out of his pocket, and she put out her
hand to receive it from him. 'You are not going to take it back again?'

'Certainly not if it be of any value to you?'

'Do you not value the presents which your friends make you?'

'If I care for the friends, I do.'

'As I care very much for this friend I shall keep the book.'

'I don't think that can be true, Mr. Caldigate?'

He was painfully near the blaze;--determined not to be burned, and yet
with no powers of flying away from the ca