'I didn't suppose that it was anything else.'
'That's not nice of you, Mr. Caldigate. You know that we are all very fond of you. We shall be so anxious to hear. You will be good to him, won't you?'
'And he to me, I hope.'
'I think you are steadier than he is, and can do more for him than he can for you. I wonder, shall we ever see each other again, Mr. Caldigate?'
'Why not?'
'New South Wales is so far, and you will both marry there, and then you will not want to come back. I hope I may live to see dear Dick again some day.'
'But only Dick?'
'And you too, if you would care about it.'
'Of course I should care about it,' he said. And as he said so, of course he put his arm round her waist and kissed her. It did not mean much. She did not think it meant much. But it gave a little colouring of romance to that special moment of her life. He, when he went up to his bed, declared to himself that it meant nothing at all. He still had those large eyes clear before him, and was still fixed in his resolution to come back for them when some undefined point of his life should have passed by.
'Now,' said Dick Shand, as they were seated together in a third-class railway carriage on the following morning, 'now I feel that I am beginning life.'