“Will he be here to-night?” Aileen says, very soft and timid like. “I almost wished I’d stayed away, but Gracey here would come. Young Cyrus Williams brought us. He wanted to show his wife the races, and take her to the ball. There they are, dancing together. George is away at the races.”

“You will see Starlight about ten or eleven o’clock, I expect,” I said. “He’s dining with the Commissioner and the camp officers. They’ll all come together, most likely.”

“Dining at the camp!” says Aileen, looking regularly perished. “You don’t mean to say they’ve taken him?”

“I mean what I say. He’s here with the Mr. Dawsons, of Wideview, and has been hand-and-glove with all the swells. I hardly think you’ll know him. It’s as much as I did.”

Poor Aileen gave another sigh.

“Do you think he’ll know me?” she says. “Oh! what a foolish girl I was to think for a moment that he could care about a girl like me. Oh! I wish I had never come.”

“Nonsense,” says Gracey, who looked a deal brighter on it. “Why, if he’s the man you say he is, this will only bring him out a bit. What do you think, Di-- I mean Mr. Jones?”

“That’s right, Miss Storefield,” says I. “Keep to the company manners tonight. We, don t know who may be listening; but I’m not much afraid of being bowled out this particular night. Some how I feel ready to chance everything for an hour’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 someone 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 XLII

CHAPTER XLII

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.