Counting the two sums, and deducting six hundred for the stone Mr. Falcon had embezzled, he gave her over seven thousand pounds.

She stared at him, and changed color at so large a sum.  “But I have no claim on that, sir.”

“That is a good joke,” said he.  “Why, you and I are partners in the whole thing—­you and I and Dick.  Was it not with his horse and rifle I bought the big diamond?  Poor dear, honest, manly Dick!  No, the money is honestly yours, Mrs. Falcon; but don’t trust a penny to your husband.”

“He will never see it, sir.  I shall take him back, and give him all his heart can ask for, with this; but he will be little more than a servant in the house now, as long as Dick is single; I know that;” and she could still cry at the humiliation of her villain.

Staines made her promise to write to him; and she did write him a sweet, womanly letter, to say that they were making an enormous fortune, and hoped to end their days in England.  Dick sent his kind love and thanks.

I will add, what she only said by implication, that she was happy after all.  She still contrived to love the thing she could not respect.  Once, when an officious friend pitied her for her husband’s lameness, she said, “Find me a face like his.  The lamer the better; he can’t run after the girls, like some.”

Dr. Staines called on Lady Cicely Treherne; the footman stared.  He left his card.

A week afterwards, she called on him.  She had a pink tinge in her cheeks, a general animation, and her face full of brightness and archness.

“Bless me!” said he bluntly, “is this you?  How you are improved!”

“Yes,” said she; “and I am come to thank you for your pwescwiption:  I followed it to the lettaa.”

“Woe is me!  I have forgotten it.”

“You diwected me to mawwy a nice man.”

“Never:  I hate a nice man.”

“No, no—­an Iwishman:  and I have done it.”

“Good gracious! you don’t mean that!  I must be more cautious in my prescriptions.  After all, it seems to agree.”

“Admiwably.”

“He loves you?”

“To distwaction.”

“He amuses you?”

“Pwodigiously.  Come and see.”

Dr. and Mrs. Staines live with Uncle Philip.  The insurance money is returned, but the diamond money makes them very easy.  Staines follows his profession now under great advantages:  a noble house, rent free; the curiosity that attaches to a man who has been canted out of a ship in mid-ocean, and lives to tell it; and then Lord Tadcaster, married into another noble house, swears by him, and talks of him; so does Lady Cicely Munster, late Treherne; and when such friends as these are warm, it makes a physician the centre of an important clientele; but his best friend of all is his unflagging industry, and his truly wonderful diagnosis, which resembles divination.  He has the ball at his feet, and above all, that without which worldly success soon palls, a happy home, a fireside warm with sympathy.