Silly as the delusion might be, it clothed her in whimsical attractiveness.

It was a beauty in her to dwell so firmly upon moral quality.  Overthrown and stunned as he was, and reduced to helplessness by her brief and positive replies, Herbert was obliged to admire the singular young lady, who spoke, without much shyness, of her incongruous, destined mate though his admiration had an edge cutting like irony.  While in the turn for candour, she ought to have told him, that previous to her decision she had weighed the case of the diverse claims of himself and Tinman, and resolved them according to her predilection for the peaceful residence of her father and herself in England.  This she had done a little regretfully, because of the natural sympathy of the young girl for the younger man.  But the younger man had seemed to her seriously-straightforward mind too light and airy in his wooing, like one of her waltzing officers—­very well so long as she stepped the measure with him, and not forcible enough to take her off her feet.  He had changed, and now that he had become persuasive, she feared he would disturb the serenity with which she desired and strove to contemplate her decision.  Tinman’s magnanimity was present in her imagination to sustain her, though she was aware that Mrs. Cavely had surprised her will, and caused it to surrender unconsulted by her wiser intelligence.

“I cannot listen to you,” she said to Herbert, after listening longer than was prudent.  “If what you say of papa is true, I do not think he will remain in Crikswich, or even in England.  But I am sure the old friend we used, to speak of so much in Australia has not wilfully betrayed him.”

Herbert would have had to say, “Look on us two!” to proceed in his baffled wooing; and the very ludicrousness of the contrast led him to see the folly and shame of proposing it.

Van Diemen came down to breakfast looking haggard and restless.  “I have ’nt had my morning’s walk—­I can’t go out to be hooted,” he said, calling to his daughter for tea, and strong tea; and explaining to Herbert that he knew it to be bad for the nerves, but it was an antidote to bad champagne.

Mr. Herbert Fellingham had previously received an invitation on behalf of a sister of his to Crikswich.  A dull sense of genuine sagacity inspired him to remind Annette of it.  She wrote prettily to Miss Mary Fellingham, and Herbert had some faint joy in carrying away the letter of her handwriting.

“Fetch her soon, for we sha’n’t be here long,” Van Diemen said to him at parting.  He expressed a certain dread of his next meeting with Mart Tinman.

Herbert speedily brought Mary Fellingham to Elba, and left her there.  The situation was apparently unaltered.  Van Diemen looked worn, like a man who has been feeding mainly on his reflections, which was manifest in his few melancholy bits of speech.  He said to Herbert:  “How you feel a thing when you are found out!” and, “It doesn’t do for a man with a heart to do wrong!” He designated the two principal roads by which poor sinners come to a conscience.  His own would have slumbered but for discovery; and, as he remarked, if it had not been for his heart leading him to Tinman, he would not have fallen into that man’s power.