So, on this advice, Tadcaster went down to Gravesend, and Lady Cicely felt a certain self-satisfaction; for, her well-meant interference having lost Rosa one husband, she was pleased to think she had done something to give her another.

Lord Tadcaster came to Rosa Staines; he found her seated with her head upon her white hand, thinking sadly of the past.

At sight of him in deep mourning, she started, and said, “Oh!”

Then she said tenderly, “We are of one color now,” and gave him her hand.

He sat down beside her, not knowing how to begin.

“I am not Tadcaster now.  I am Earl of Miltshire.”

“Ah, yes; I forgot,” said she indifferently.

“This is my first visit to any one in that character.”

“Thank you.”

“It is an awfully important visit to me.  I could not feel myself independent, and able to secure your comfort and little Christie’s, without coming to the lady, the only lady I ever saw, that—­oh, Mrs. Staines—­Rosa—­who could see you, as I have done—­mingle his tears with yours, as I have done, and not love you, and long to offer you his love?”

“Love! to me, a broken-hearted woman, with nothing to live for but his memory and his child.”

She looked at him with a sort of scared amazement.

“His child shall be mine.  His memory is almost as dear to me as to you.”

“Nonsense, child, nonsense!” said she, almost sternly.

“Was he not my best friend?  Should I have the health I enjoy, or even be alive, but for him?  Oh, Mrs. Staines—­Rosa, you will not live all your life unmarried; and who will love you as I do?  You are my first and only love.  My happiness depends on you.”

“Your happiness depend on me!  Heaven forbid—­a woman of my age, that feels so old, old, old.”

“You are not old; you are young, and sad, and beautiful, and my happiness depends on you.”  She began to tremble a little.  Then he kneeled at her knees, and implored her, and his hot tears fell upon the hand she put out to stop him, while she turned her head away, and the tears began to run.

Oh! never can the cold dissecting pen tell what rushes over the heart that has loved and lost, when another true love first kneels and implores for love, or pity, or anything the bereaved can give.

CHAPTER XXIII.

When Falcon went, luck seemed to desert their claim:  day after day went by without a find; and the discoveries on every side made this the more mortifying.

By this time the diggers at Bulteel’s pan were as miscellaneous as the audience at Drury Lane Theatre, only mixed more closely; the gallery folk and the stalls worked cheek by jowl.  Here a gentleman with an affected lisp, and close by an honest fellow, who could not deliver a sentence without an oath, or some still more horrible expletive that meant nothing at all in reality, but served to make respectable flesh creep:  interspersed with these, Hottentots, Kafirs, and wild blue blacks gayly clad in an ostrich feather, a scarlet ribbon, and a Tower musket sold them by some good Christian for a modern rifle.