'It's that gentleman, Mr Wentworth, who comes here so often, and looks at you so. Isn't it? Mr Saunders said he knew it would come. And I don't believe there's another gentleman in all the world as is so fit for you, that I don't; for I know a little about him too. I did not like to tell you before, but that time as'——
'Stop, stop, Becky!' I ejaculated, laughing outright. 'What in the world put such an idea into your head? Mr Wentworth indeed! Certainly not; quite a different kind of gentleman.'
'Oh!' said Becky, her face falling.
'But I do not wish it mentioned, Becky. I only tell you that you may have the pleasure of feeling that you and I need have no anxiety about the future; for of course you will be with me.'
There was only one little drawback to Becky's happiness now—the regret that Robert Wentworth was not to be my husband; and I thought his being so great a favourite of hers quite sufficiently accounted for her disappointment. I, in turn, was a little disappointed that the face I had shewn her in the locket was so difficult to connect with the idea of my happiness; though I told myself Philip must look much more manly now. But having set Becky's fears at rest, I was a great deal too anxious about Lilian's future to think much about my own.
[FOSSIL MEN.]
Men of science in their eagerness to support a theory are apt to fall into mistakes. They reason honestly enough, but from too narrow a basis of facts. For example, the skeleton of a man is found imbedded in limestone. That man must have lived in the geological period, long before the commencement of human record. This theory looks well, but is not satisfactory. We do not know at what time the limestone, which was originally a loose substance, assumed the rocky form. There is a case in point.
At the western end of the geological galleries of the British Museum may be seen a human skeleton imbedded in a block of limestone brought from Guadeloupe. At first sight this would seem to be a silent but unimpeachable witness to the remote antiquity of our race. On investigation, however, the fossil man is found to be in this point of view a bearer of most unreliable testimony. All fossils are not necessarily very old, and this skeleton is comparatively a modern one. The limestone in which it is imbedded is a very rapidly formed deposit of corals and small shells bound together by a kind of natural calcareous cement. The remains are those of an Indian, whose death is placed by some authorities at as recent a period as two hundred years ago. The same rock often contains remains of unmistakably recent origin. In England a coin of Edward I. has been found imbedded in it; in France a cannon buried in this hard stone was quarried out of a deposit on the lower Rhone.
Another 'fossil man' was found at Denise in Auvergne. The bones were beneath the hardened lava stream of an extinct volcano, and it was alleged that the volcanoes of Auvergne had not been active since the Christian era, as Julius Cæsar had actually encamped among them. This view was put forward more than thirty years ago. Since then, a more careful investigation of local history has proved that there were serious volcanic disturbances in Auvergne as late as the fifth century; and further, it appears that the original position of the buried man is very doubtful, as there has been a landslip on the spot.