When he found himself alone with Maria in the drawing-room on the following morning, he almost thought that it must have been arranged by the family.  ‘Doesn’t it seem almost no time since you went away,’ said the young lady.

‘It has gone quickly;—­but a great deal has been done.’

‘I suppose so.  Poor Dick!’

’Yes, indeed!  Poor fellow!  We can only hope about Dick.  I have been speaking to your father about him.’

’Of course we all know that you did your very best for him.  He has said so himself when he has written.  But you;—­you have been fortunate.’

’Yes, I have done very well.  There is so much chance at it that there is nothing to be proud of.’

’I am sure there is a great deal;—­cleverness, and steadiness, and courage, and all that.  We were delighted to hear it, though poor Dick could not share it with you.  You have made an immense fortune.’

’Oh dear no,—­not that.  I have been able to get over the little difficulties which I left behind me when I went away, and have got something in hand to live upon.’

‘And now——?’

‘I suppose I shall go back again,’ said Caldigate, with an air of indifference.

‘Go back again!’ said Maria, 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.