e to London. Could it be that he had made
the journey merely with the object of asserting that he had the power
of making this girl his wife, and of proving his power by marrying
her. "What is it that you wish, Mr Whittlestaff?" he asked.

"Wish! What business have you to ask after my wishes? But you know
what my wishes are very well. I will not pretend to keep them in the
dark. She came to my house, and I soon learned to desire that she
should be my wife. If I know what love is, I loved her. If I know
what love is, I do love her still. She is all the world to me. I have
no diamonds to care for; I have no rich mines to occupy my heart;
I am not eager in the pursuit of wealth. I had lived a melancholy,
lonely life till this young woman had come to my table,--till I
had felt her sweet hand upon mine,--till she had hovered around me,
covering everything with bright sunshine. Then I asked her to be my
wife;--and she told me of you."

"She told you of me?"

"Yes; she told me of you--of you who might then have been dead, for
aught she knew. And when I pressed her, she said that she would think
of you always."

"She said so?"

"Yes; that she would think of you always. But she did not say that
she would always love you. And in the same breath she promised to be
my wife. I was contented,--and yet not quite contented. Why should
she think of you always? But I believed that it would not be so. I
thought that if I were good to her, I should overcome her. I knew
that I should be better to her than you would be."

"Why should I not be good to her?"

"There is an old saying of a young man's slave and an old man's
darling. She would at any rate have been my darling. It might be that
she would have been your slave."

"My fellow-workman in all things."

"You think so now; but the man always becomes the master. If you
grovelled in the earth for diamonds, she would have to look for them
amidst the mud and slime."

"I have never dreamed of taking her to the diamond-fields."

"It would have been so in all other pursuits."

"She would have had none that she had not chosen," said John Gordon.

"How am I to know that? How am I to rest assured that the world would
be smooth to her if she were your creature? I am not assured--I do
not know."

"Who can tell, as you say? Can I promise her a succession of joys if
she be my wife? She is not one who will be likely to look for such a
life as that. She will know that she must take the