This would be her last opportunity. So Mary told herself as she got out of the carriage at Mr Hall\'s front door. It was made manifest to her by such a speech that he did not expect that she should do so, but looked upon her doing so as within the verge of possibility. She could still do it, and yet not encounter his disgust or his horror. How terrible was the importance to herself, and, as she believed, to the other man also. Was she not justified in so thinking? Mr Gordon had come home, travelling a great distance, at much risk to his property, at great loss of time, through infinite trouble and danger, merely to ask her to be his wife. Had a letter reached her from him but a week ago bidding her to come, would she not have gone through all the danger and all the trouble? How willingly would she have gone! It was the one thing that she desired; and, as far as she could understand the signs which he had given, it was the one, one thing which he desired. He had made his appeal to that other man, and, as far as she could understand the signs which had reached her, had been referred with confidence to her decision. Now she was told that the chance of changing her mind was still in her power.

The matter was one of terrible importance; but was its importance to Mr Whittlestaff as great as to John Gordon? She put herself altogether out of the question. She acknowledged to herself, with a false humility, that she was nobody;—she was a poor woman living on charity, and was not to be thought of when the position of these two men was taken into consideration. It chanced that they both wanted her. Which wanted the most? Which of the two would want her for the longest? To which would her services be of the greater avail in assisting him to his happiness. Could there be a doubt? Was it not in human nature that she should bind herself to the younger man, and with him go through the world, whether safely or in danger?

But though she had had time to allow these questions to pass through her mind between the utterance of Mr Whittlestaff\'s words and her entrance into Mr Hall\'s drawing-room, she did not in truth doubt. She knew that she had made up her mind on the matter. Mr Gordon would in all probability have no opportunity of saying another word to her. But let him say what word he might, it should be in vain. Nothing that he could say, nothing that she could say, would avail anything. If this other man would release her,—then indeed she would be released. But there was no chance of such release coming. In truth, Mary did not know how near the chance was to her;—or rather, how near the chance had been. He had now positively made up his mind, and would say not a word further unless she asked him. If Mary said nothing to John Gordon on this evening, he would take an opportunity before they left the house to inform Mr Hall of his intended marriage. When once the word should have passed his mouth, he could not live under the stigma of a second Catherine Bailey.

"Miss Lawrie, pray let me make you known to my intended." This came from Mr Montagu Blake, who felt himself to be justified by his peculiar circumstances in so far taking upon himself the work of introducing the guests in Mr Hall\'s house. "Of course, you\'ve heard all about it. I am the happiest young man in Hampshire,—and she is the next."

"Speak for yourself, Montagu. I am not a young man at all."

"You\'re a young man\'s darling, which is the next thing to it."

"How are you, Whittlestaff?" said Mr Hall. "Wonderful weather, isn\'t it? I\'m told that you\'ve been in trouble about that drunken husband which plagues the life out of that respectable housekeeper of yours."

"He is a trouble; but if he is bad to me, how much worse must he be to her?"

"That\'s true. He must be very bad, I should think. Miss Mary, why don\'t you come over this fine weather, and have tea with my girls and Kattie Forrester in the woods? You should take your chance while you have a young man willing to wait upon you."

"I shall be quite delighted," said Blake, "and so will John Gordon."

"Only that I shall be in London this time to-morrow," said Gordon.

"That\'s nonsense. You are not going to Kimberley all at once. The young ladies expect you to bring out a lot of diamonds and show them before you start. Have you seen his diamonds, Miss Lawrie?"

"Indeed no," said Mary.

"I think I should have asked just to see them," said Evelina Hall. Why should they join her name with his in this uncivil manner, or suppose that she had any special power to induce him to show his treasures.

"When you first find a diamond," said Mr Hall, "what do you do with it? Do you ring a bell and call together your friends, and begin to rejoice."

"No, indeed. The diamond is generally washed out of the mud by some nigger, and we have to look very sharp after him to see that he doesn\'t hide it under his toe-nails. It\'s not a very romantic kind of business from first to last."

"Only profitable," said the curate.

"That\'s as may be. It is subject to greater losses than the preaching of sermons."

"I should like to go out and see it all," said Miss Hall, looking into Miss Lawrie\'s face. This also appeared to Mary to be ill-natured.

Then the butler announced the dinner, and they all followed Mr Hall and the curate\'s bride out of one room into the other. "This young lady," said he, "is supposed to be in the ascendant just at the present moment. She can\'t be married above two or three times at the most. I say this to excuse myself to Miss Lawrie, who ought perhaps to have the post of honour." To this some joking reply was made, and they all sat down to their dinner. Miss Lawrie was at Mr Hall\'s left hand, and at her left hand John Gordon was seated. Mary could perceive that everything was arranged so as to throw herself and John Gordon together,—as though they had some special interest in each other. Of all this Mr Whittlestaff saw nothing. But John Gordon did perceive something, and told himself that that ass Blake had been at work. But his perceptions in the matter were not half as sharp as those of Mary Lawrie.

"I used to be very fond of your father, Gordon," said Mr Hall, when the dinner was half over. "It\'s all done and gone now. Dear, dear, dear!"

"He was an unfortunate man, and perhaps expected too much from his friends."

"I am very glad to see his son here, at any rate. I wish you were not going to settle down so far away from us."

"Kimberley is a long way off."

"Yes, indeed; and when a fellow gets out there he is apt to stay, I suppose."

"I shall do so, probably. I have nobody near enough to me here at home to make it likely that I shall come back."

"You have uncles and aunts?" said Mr Hall.

"One uncle and two aunts. I shall suit their views and my cousins\' better by sending home some diamonds than by coming myself."

"How long will that take?" asked Mr Hall. The conversation was kept up solely between Mr Hall and John Gordon. Mr Whittlestaff took no share in it unless when he was asked a question, and the four girls kept up a whisper with Miss Forrester and Montagu Blake.

"I have a share in rather a good thing," said Gordon; "and if I could get out of it so as to realise my property, I think that six months might suffice."

"Oh, dear! Then we may have you back again before the year\'s out?" Mr Whittlestaff looked up at this, as though apprised that the danger was not yet over. But he reflected that before twelve months were gone he would certainly have made Mary Lawrie his wife.

"Kimberley is not a very alluring place," said John Gordon. "I don\'t know any spot on God\'s earth that I should be less likely to choose as my abiding resting-place."

"Except for the diamonds."

"Except for the diamonds, as you remark. And therefore when a man has got his fill of diamonds, he is likely to leave."

"His fill of diamonds!" said Augusta Hall.

"Shouldn\'t you like to try your fill of diamonds?" asked Blake.

"Not at all," said Evelina. "I\'d rather have strawberries and cream."

"I think I should like diamonds best," said Mary. Whereupon Evelina suggested that her younger sister was a greedy little creature.

"As soon as you\'ve got your fill of diamonds, which won\'t take more than six months longer," suggested Mr Hall, "you\'ll come back again?"

"Not exactly. I have an idea of going up the country across the Zambesi. I\'ve a notion that I should like to make my way out somewhere in the Mediterranean,—Egypt, for instance, or Algiers."

"What!—across the equator? You\'d never do that alive?"

"Things of that kind have been done. Stanley crossed the continent."

"But not from south to north. I don\'t believe in that. You had better remain at Kimberley and get more diamonds."

"He\'d be with diamonds like the boy with the bacon," said the clergyman; "when prepared for another wish, he\'d have more than he could eat."

"To tell the truth," said John Gordon, "I don\'t quite know what I should do. It would depend perhaps on what somebody else would join me in doing. My life was very lonely at Kimberley, and I do not love being alone."

"Then, why don\'t you take a wife?" said Montagu Blake, very loudly, as though he had hit the target right in the bull\'s-eye. He so spoke as to bring the conversation to an abrupt end. Mr Whittlestaff immediately looked conscious. He was a man who, on such an occasion, could not look otherwise than conscious. And the five girls, with all of whom the question of the loves of John Gordon and Mary Lawrie had been fully discussed, looked conscious. Mary Lawrie was painfully conscious; but endeavoured to hide it, not unsuccessfully. But in her endeavour she had to look unnaturally stern,—and was conscious, too, that she d............