They lived in London, if the part that was still Old Kensington could be so reckoned at that time. But in summer they took a cottage near Mr. Merridew, partly because it was called The Fortune, and was yet one of the smallest fortunes in the world, and partly because Nan loved roses, which grew on that rich soil as on no other. Shortly after Mr. Merridew's death his house, being sold, was turned into a school; after some years it became a great school; and their boys, the grandsons of the old red place, went back there on the way to Harrow.
Denis kept in touch with his first partners on the gold-fields, though it was some years before he saw either of them again. Doherty did almost as well as ever for some time after his departure, but the life was no longer what it had been, and the lad gave it up on hearing from Denis that there was no chance of his return. He went back to the station on the craggy coast where the North Foreland had met her doom. Denis next heard of him as a pioneer squatter in the Riverina country, and a partner of his former master, the kindly Kitto; and when they did meet in after life the younger man happened to be the richer of the two. His career was checkered but honourable, and his memory is one of the few green things in the district of his adoption. Denis saw more, however, of a bland clergyman who called on him in the City one fine May morning: he had come in for a family living in East Anglia, where the Dents found Parson Moseley as great a success with his crass parishioners as he had proved a failure among the quick and energetic diggers of the early days.
There was one other figure of those days whom Denis encountered twice in the 'fifties, once for a minute in Pall Mall, when an ill-advised expression of gratitude on the part of Denis curtailed an interchange of much interest, and a few years later at a social function of some magnitude to which Nan enticed her husband. She recognized the tall and lazy-looking gentleman who recognized Denis; in point of fact he was a public man, and far less lazy than he looked; but as Nan did not know him she withdrew to the nearest ottoman, where she looked very beautiful under the glass chandelier of the period (in spite of its unregenerate skirts) during the little conversation which Denis was careful not to cut short again.
"I hope you saw the news?" said the tall man, as though he and Denis had been meeting every day.
"The news from where, sir?"
"Black Hill Flat, if you happen to recollect such a place."
"I should think I did!" cried Denis. "But I haven't seen anything about it in the paper."
"I knew you had a good memory," said the tall man, smiling a little over his beard. "I suppose it doesn't by any chance hark back to what I told you would some day happen on Black Hill Flat?"
"Rather!" cried Denis again. "You used to say that gold would be found there sooner or later."
"It was found the other day, within a few feet of the top."