won my poor heart.
I was not worth the winning to either of you."

"It was for me to judge of that."

"Just so. But you do not know his heart. How prone he is to hold by
that which he knows he has made his own. I was his own."

"You told him the truth when he came to you."

"I was his own," said Mary, firmly. "Had he bade me never to see
you again, I should never have seen you. Had he not gone after you
himself, you would never have come back."

"I do not know how that might be."

"It would have been to no good. Having consented to take everything
from his hands, I could never have been untrue to him. I tell you
that I should as certainly have become his wife, as that girl will
become the wife of that young clergyman. Of course I was unhappy."

"Were you, dear?"

"Yes. I was very unhappy. When you flashed upon me there at Croker's
Hall, I knew at once all the joy that had fallen within my reach. You
were there, and you had come for me! All the way from Kimberley, just
for me to smile upon you! Did you not?"

"Indeed I did."

"When you had found your diamonds, you thought of me,--was it not
so?"

"Of you only."

"You flatterer! You dear, bonny lover. You whom I had always loved
and prayed for, when I knew not where you were! You who had not left
me to be like Mariana, but had hurried home at once for me when your
man's work was done,--doing just what a girl would think that a
man should do for her sake. But it had been all destroyed by the
necessity of the case. I take no blame to myself."

"No; none."

"Looking back at it all, I was right. He had chosen to want me, and
had a right to me. I had taken his gifts, given with a full hand.
And where were you, my own one? Had I a right to think that you were
thinking of me?"

"I was thinking of you."

"Yes; because you have turned out to be one in a hundred: but I was
not to have known that. Then he asked me, and I thought it best that
he should know the truth and take his choice. He did take his choice
before he knew the truth,--that you were so far on your way to seek
my hand."

"I was at that very moment almost within reach of it."

"But still it had become his. He did not toss it from him then as a
thing that was valueless. With the truest, noblest observance, he
made me understand how much it might be to him, and then surrendered
it without a word of ill humour, because he told himself that in
truth my heart was within your keeping. If you will k