dealt with you as with them?"

"Where I am now, I suppose," said Tom quietly.

"Where you are now?"

"Yes: where I ought to be. I am where I ought to be now. I suppose if
I had found myself anywhere else this morning, I should have taken it
as a sign that I was wanted there, and not here."

Grace heaved a sigh at words which were certainly startling. The Stoic
optimism of the world-hardened doctor was new and frightful to her.

"My good madam," said he, "the part of Scripture which I appreciate
best, just now, is the case of poor Job, where Satan has leave to rob
and torment him to the utmost of his wicked will, provided only he
does not touch his life, I wish," he went on, lowering his voice, "to
tell you something which I do not wish publicly talked of; but in
which you may help me. I had nearly fifteen hundred pounds about me
when I came ashore last night, sewed in a belt round my waist. It is
gone. That is all."

Tom looked steadily at her as he spoke. She turned pale, red, pale
again, her lips quivered: but she spoke no word.

"She has it, as I live!" thought Tom to himself. "'Frailty, thy name
is woman!' The canting, little, methodistical humbug! She must have
slipped it off my waist as I lay senseless. I suppose she means to
keep it in pawn, till I redeem it by marrying her. Well I might take
an uglier mate certainly; but when I do enter into the bitter bonds of
matrimony, I should like to be sure, beforehand, that my wife was not
a thief!"

Why, then, did not Tom, if he were so very sure of Grace's having the
belt, charge her with the theft? because he had found out already how
popular she was, and was afraid of merely making himself unpopular;
because, too, he took for granted that whosoever had his belt, had
hidden it already beyond the reach of a search warrant; and, because,
after all, an honourable shame restrained him. It would be a poor
return to the woman who had saved his life to charge her with theft
the next morning; and more, there was something about that girl's face
which had made him feel that, if he had seen her put the belt into her
pocket before his eyes, he could not have found the heart to have sent
her to gaol. "No!" thought he; "I'll get it out of her, or whoever has
it, and stay here till I do get it. One place is as good as another to
me."

But what was Grace saying?

She had turned, after two or three minutes' astonished silence, to her
mother and Captain Willis--

"Belt