r by my name.'

'O John!--will not that be against us?'

'It will be against me,--in the minds of persons like your mother.'

'I will care nothing for that. I know that you have repented, and are
sorry. I know that you love me now.'

'I have always loved you since the first moment that I saw you.'

'Never for a moment believe that I will believe them. Let them do what
they will, I will be your wife. Nothing shall take me away from you. But
it is sad, is it not; on that the very day that poor baby has been
christened?' Then they sat and wept together and tried to comfort each
other. But nothing could comfort him. He was almost prostrated at the
prospect of his coming misery,--and of hers.

Chapter XXIX

'Just by Telling Me that I Am'

The thunderbolt had fallen now. Caldigate, when he left his wife that he
might stroll about the place after the dusk had fallen, told himself
again and again that the thunderbolt had certainly fallen now. There
could be no longer a doubt but that this woman would claim him as her
husband. A whole world of remorse and regrets oppressed his conscience
and his heart. He looked back and remembered the wise counsels which had
been given him on board the ship, when the captain and Mrs. Callender
and poor Dick Shand had remonstrated with him, and called to mind his
own annoyance when he had bidden them mind their own affairs. And then
he remembered how he had determined to break away from the woman at
Sydney, and to explain to her, as he might then have done without
injustice, that they two could be of no service the one to the other,
and that they had better part. It seemed now, as he looked back, to have
been so easy for him then to have avoided danger, so easy to have kept a
straight course! But now,--now, surely he would be overwhelmed.

And then how easy it would have been, had he been more careful at the
beginning of these troubles, to have bought these wretches off! He had
been, he now acknowledged, too peremptory in his first refusal to refund
a portion of the money to Crinkett. The application had, indeed, been
made without those proofs as to the condition of the mine which had
since reached him, and he had distrusted Crinkett. Crinkett he had known
to be a man not to be trusted. But yet, even after receiving the letter
from Euphemia Smith, the matter might have been arranged. When he had
first become assured that the new Polyeuka Company had failed, he should
have mad