our's happiness like this.'

Gracey said nothing, but looked down, and Aileen kept turning towards
the door as if she half hoped and was half afraid of seeing him come in.
By and by we heard some one say, 'Here comes the Commissioner; all the
camp will be here now,' and there was a bit of a move to look at them as
they came in.

Chapter 42

A good many gentlemen and ladies that lived in the town and in the
diggings, or near it, had come before this and had been dancing away and
enjoying themselves, though the room was pretty full of diggers and all
sorts of people. But as everybody was quiet and well behaved, it didn't
make much odds who was there.

But, of course, the Commissioner was the great man of the whole place,
and the principal visitors, like the Mr. Dawsons and some others, were
bound to come along with him. Then there were the other Government
officers, the bankers and surveyors, lawyers and doctors, and so on. All
of them took care to come a little late with their wives and families so
as to be in the room at the same time as the swell lot.

Bella Barnes was going to marry a surveyor, a wildish young fellow,
but a good one to work as ever was. She was going to chance his coming
straight afterwards. He was a likely man to rise in his office, and
she thought she'd find a way to keep him out of debt and drinking and
gambling too.

Well, in comes the Commissioner and his friends, very grand indeed, all
dressed like swells always do in the evening, I believe, black all over,
white tie, shining boots, white kid gloves, flower in their buttonhole,
all regular. People may laugh, but they did look different from the
others--showed more blood like. I don't care what they say, there is
such a thing.

Close by the Commissioner, laughing and talking, was the two Mr.
Dawsons; and--I saw Aileen give a start--who should come next, cheek
by jowl with the police magistrate, whom he'd been making laugh with
something he'd said as they came in, but Starlight himself, looking like
a regular prince--their pictures anyhow--and togged out to the nines
like all the rest of 'em. Aileen kept looking at him as he lounged up
the ballroom, and I thought she'd fall down in a faint or bring herself
to people's notice by the wild, earnest, sad way she looked at him.
However he'd got his clothes and the rest of it that fitted him like as
if they'd been grown for him, I couldn't think. But of course he'd made
all that right