' said Caldigate, with a considerable
amount of deportment, and an assumed look of age,--as though the cares
of gold-seeking had made him indifferent to all the lighter joys of
existence.

'But you mean to live at Folking?' asked Aunt Polly.

'I should think probably not. But a man situated as I am, never can say
where he means to live.'

'But you are to have Folking?' whispered the squire,--whispered it so
that all the party heard the words;--whispering not from reticence but
excitement.

'That's the idea at present,' said the Folking heir. 'But Polyeuka is so
much more to me than Folking. A gold mine with fifty or sixty thousand
pounds worth of plant about it, Aunt Polly, is an imperious mistress.'
In all this our hero was calumniating himself. Polyeuka and the plant he
was willing to abandon on very moderate terms, and had arranged to wipe
his hands of the whole concern if those moderate terms were accepted.
But cousin Julia and aunt Polly were enemies against whom it was
necessary to assume whatever weapons might come to his hand.

He had arranged to stay a week at Babington. He had considered it all
very deeply, and had felt that as two days was the least fraction of
time which he could with propriety devote to the Shands, so must he give
at least a week to Babington. There was, therefore, no necessity for any
immediate violence on the part of the ladies. The whole week might
probably have been allowed to pass without absolute violence, had he not
shown by various ways that he did not intend to make many visits to the
old haunts of his childhood before his return to Australia. When he said
that he should not hunt in the coming winter; that he feared his hand
was out for shooting; that he had an idea of travelling on the Continent
during the autumn; and that there was no knowing when he might be
summoned back to Polyeuka, of course there came across Aunt Polly's
mind,--and probably also across Julia's mind,--an idea that he meant to
give them the slip again. On the former occasion he had behaved badly.
This was their opinion. But, as it had turned out, his circumstances at
the moment were such as to make his conduct pardonable. He had been
harassed by the importunities both of his father and of Davis; and
that, under such circumstances, he should have run away from his
affianced bride, was almost excusable, But now----! It was very
different now. Something must be settled. It was very well to talk about
Polyeu