And, to her thinking, among men, none were so rough as miners,--and among miners none were so godless, so unrestrained so wild as the seekers after gold.

She had read, perhaps, something of the Spaniards in Central America, and regarded such adventurers as she would pirates and freebooters generally.

And then with regard to the Caldigates generally,--the elder of whom she knew to have been one of her husband's intimate friends in his less regenerated days,--she believed them to be infidel freethinkers.

She was not, therefore, by any means predisposed in favour of this young man; and when he spoke of his desire to be explicit, she thought that he had better be explicit anywhere rather than in her drawing-room.

'You may remember,' he said, 'that I had the pleasure of meeting your daughter here before I left the country five years ago.' Then she listened with all her ears.