CHAPTER 12

Lady Bridget made as dignified a retreat as was possible in the circumstances. She could have slain Mrs Hensor at that moment. She took the blacks to the veranda of the old Humpey and went to look in the office for antiseptics, lint and bandages. Chen Sing, the Chinese cook, came at her call, and rendered assistance with the bland phlegm of his race. The spear had been pulled out of Oola's arm by the time Lady Bridget came back with the dressings. In her spasms of East End philanthropy she had learned the first principles of surgical aid. When Oola's arm and Wombo's gashed head had been washed and bandaged, the trouble was to know what to do with the pair.

Now that they were comfortable and out of pain, fed and given tobacco to smoke and a tot of rum apiece, they had time to remember superstitious fears kept at bay while they had been running for their life. Both were afraid to show themselves in the open. On one hand, there was the terror of McKeith; on the other, of Oola's husband. Lady Bridget gathered that Oola's husband was a medicine man, and that he had 'pointed a bone at his faithless wife and her lover.' To 'point a bone' at an enemy—the bone having first been smeared with human blood, and subjected to magical incantations—is the worst spell that one aboriginal can cast upon another. It means death or the direst misfortune. All that the afflicted one can do is to fly—to hide himself beyond the sorcerer's ken and the reach of pursuit. For this reason, Wombo and Oola had fled back to Moongarr. No outside black dared venture within range of McKeith's gun. Now Wombo and Oola besought Bridget to hide them from the vengeful furies. There was that slab and bark hut at the end of the kitchen and store wing. Nobody was likely at present to want to go into it. The door had a padlock, and it was used as a store-house for the hides of beasts that had been killed for the sake of the skins when in the last stage of pleuro. The key was always kept hung up in McKeith's office.

Here Lady Bridget installed Wombo and Oola. She brought them cooked meat, bread and a ration of tea and sugar, provided them with a pair of blankets, and found for Wombo some old moleskins, a shirt, and a pair of boots, while Oola almost forgot the medicine man's evil spell in her puzzled delight over a lacey undergarment and a discarded kimono dressing-grown, which had been part of Lady Bridget's trousseau. That excitement over, the lonely mistress of Moongarr went back to her own habitation. She ate her solitary dinner and paced the veranda till darkness fell and the haunted loneliness became an almost unbearable oppression. Vast plains, distant ranges, gidia scrub and the far horizon melted into an illimitable shadow. The world seemed boundless as the starry sky—and yet she was in prison! She had longed for the freedom of the wild, and her life was more circumscribed than ever. A phrase in an Australian poem, that had struck her when she had read it not long ago came back upon her with poignant meaning. 'Eucalyptic cloisterdom'—that was the phrase, and it was this to which she had condemned herself. The gum trees enclosed for her one immense cell and she had become utterly weary of her mental and her spiritual incarceration. Oh! for the sting of love's strong emotion to break the monotony. The most sordid sights and sounds of London streets, the most inane babble of a fashionable crowd would be more stimulating to her brain, sweeter in her ears than the arid expanse, the weird bush noises—howl of dingoes, wail of curlews, lowing of cattle—that a year ago had seemed so eerily fascinating.

Even her marriage! The romance of it had faded, as it were, into the dull drab of withered gum leaves. The charm of primal conditions had been overpowered by their discomfort. Nature had never intended her for the wife of a backwoodsman. At times she felt an almost unendurable craving for the ordinary luxuries of civilisation. The bathing appliances here—or rather, the lack of them—were often positive torture to her. She hated the food—continual coarse beef varied by stringy goats' flesh or game from the lagoon. She had come to loathe wild duck—when the men had time to shoot it. She could never bring herself to destroy harmless creatures, and was a rank coward over firearms. Talk of the simple life! Why, it was only since they had got Fo Wung that there had been any vegetables. And the climate—though the short winter had been pleasant enough as a whole—was abominable. The long summer heat, the flies and the mosquitoes! What had she not suffered the first summer after her marriage! And now the hot weather was coming again. That was not the root of the trouble, however—Bridget was honest enough to confess it. The root lay in herself—in her own instability of purpose, her mercurial temperament. She had been born with that temperament. All the O'Haras loved change—hungered after strong sensation. She was spoiling now for emotional excitement.

Well, the little human drama of the Blacks' camp had taken her out of herself for an hour or two. It had been so funny to see Oola stroking the lace frills of Lady Bridget's old petticoat and looking up at Wombo with frank coquetry as she mimicked the 'White Mary's' gestures and gait. Lady Bridget meant to stand by the savage lovers. She would not allow Colin to treat them badly when he came back.

Ninnis, the overseer, broke upon her restless meditations. He was a rough specimen, originally raised in Texas, who, after knocking about in his youth as a cow-boy in the two Americas, had come to Australia about fifteen years previously, had 'free-selected' disastrously, and, during the last five years, had been in McKeith's employ. He was devoted to his master, but he looked upon McKeith's marriage as a pernicious investment. His republican upbringing could not stomach the 'Ladyship,' and he persisted in calling Lady Bridget Mrs McKeith. He considered her flighty and extravagant in her ideas, and was always divided between unwilling fascination and grumpy disapproval. To-night he was in the latter mood and this incensed Lady Bridget.

'I've been writing up the log,' he began in a surly, aggressive tone, 'and I thought I'd better make a note of Wombo and that gin having come to the head-station, in case of there being trouble with the Blacks.'

'Why should there be trouble with the Blacks?' she asked, in manner equally unconciliatory.

'Well, ye know—though, I daresay, it wouldn't seem of much consequence to you—Wombo's gone agen the laws of the tribe, and that's a serious matter. If they know he's skulking here under protection, they'll be spearing the cattle, and the Boss won't like that.'

'I'll explain to Mr McKeith,' said Lady Bridget haughtily.

'Well, I reckon it's best not to keep them on the head-station against the Boss's orders,' persisted Ninnis.

Lady Bridget set her little white teeth. 'Naturally, Mr McKeith's orders don't apply to ME—as I had to tell Mrs Hensor.'

'Mrs Hensor knows the Boss better than most people,' said Ninnis, at which Lady Bridget flashed out.

'We need not discuss that question, Mr Ninnis.'

Ninnis' jaw stiffened underneath his shaggy goatee.

'Well, I guess you know your own business, Mrs McKeith, and it's up to you to square things with the Boss.'

Lady Bridget reared her small form and bent her head with great stateliness.

'But I'll just say, though,' went on Ninnis, 'that I hear Harris of the police is coming along. And what Harris doesn't think he knows about the heel of the law being kept on Blacks—and every other darned unit in the creation scheme'—muttered Ninnis in parenthesis—'ain't entered in the Almighty's Log-book.'

Ninnis expectorated over the veranda railings—a habit of his that jarred on Lady Bridget.

'Well, what about Harris?'

'He's had his eye on Wombo and would be glad of an opportunity to best him—on account of a little affair about a colt Wombo rode for him at the last Tunumburra races—and lost the stakes—out of spite, Harris declares.'

'Oh, I know about that—and I told Mr Harris what I thought about his treatment of the Blacks. But he can't punish Wombo if I choose to have him here. I don't think Mr McKeith would bring Harris to Moongarr—he knows I can't bear him.'

'Well, I reckon that's up to you to square with the Boss,' repeated Ninnis surlily. 'I'm told Harris is on the look-out for desperate characters going along the Leura—these unionist organisers—dropping in at stations on pretence of getting rations and spying out the land, and calling on the men to join them. There was a boundary rider from Breeza Downs to-day—caught us up with the tailing mob and fetched back their new chum and Zack Duppo, leaving us awful short-handed—so that if Joe Casey doesn't fetch in the milkers so early to-morrow you'll know it's because I've had to send him out herding. They're doing their shearing early at Breeza Downs with shearers Windeatt has imported from the south, and he wants police protection for them and himself.'

Lady Bridget laughed.

'Harris and his two constables will have enough to do if they are to protect the district.'

'That's just what Windeatt has been clamouring about. Now the Government have sent up a military patrol, I believe. But they say it isn't strong enough, and all the able-bodied men on the Leura are enrolling as specials. No doubt, that's what been keeping the Boss. You may be sure if there's fighting to be done—black or white—he'll be in it.'

Lady Bridget angered Ninnis by her apparent indifference, and he bade her a cross good-night. Had it been anybody else she would have encouraged him to stay and talk. As it was, she resumed her lonely pacing, and did not go to her room till the whole station was abed.

When at last she went to sleep she dreamed again vividly of Willoughby Maule.

CHAPTER 13

McKeith returned, without warning, the following afternoon. He was not alone, but had spurred on in advance of the other two men he had brought with him. Lady Bridget, reading in her hammock at the upper end of the veranda, heard the sound of a horse approaching, and saw her husband appear above the hill from the Gully Crossing. She got to her feet, expecting that he would ride up to the veranda, calling 'Biddy—Biddy,' as he usually did after an absence. But instead, he pulled up suddenly, turned his horse in the direction of the Bachelors' Quarters, and passed from her line of vision.

She supposed, naturally, that someone at the Quarters had attracted his attention, then remembering that Ninnis and the white men were out with the cattle, wondered, as the minutes went by, who and what detained him.

Tommy Hensor, running up from the garden with his evening dole of vegetables, enlightened her.

'Boss come back, Ladyship. I can see him. He is up, talking to Mother.'

Lady Bridget was too proud a woman to feel petty jealousy, nor would it have occurred to her to be jealous of Mrs Hensor. Her sentiment of dislike towards that person was of quite another order. But she was just in the mood to resent neglect on the part of McKeith.

She went to the veranda railing, whence she had a view of the Bachelors' Quarters, and was able to see for herself that Tommy's report had been correct. She called to the child:

'Go at once, Tommy, and tell the master that I am waiting.'

Tommy flew off immediately on his small, sturdy legs, and Lady Bridget watched the scene at the Bachelors' Quarters. McKeith had dismounted, and with one foot on the edge of the veranda, was facing Mrs Hensor, who looked fresh and comely in a clean blouse and bright-coloured skirt. The two seemed to have a good deal to say to each other, though Lady Bridget heard only the voices, not the words. Her Irish temper rose at the thought that Mrs Hensor might be giving him her version of the Wombo episode. She felt glad that the black-boy and his gin were comfortably sleeping off the effect of their wounds, and of the plentiful meals supplied them in the hide-house, and thus were not in evidence. When McKeith spoke, it was in a dictatorial, angry tone—that of the incensed master. Clearly, however, Mrs Hensor was not the object of his wrath. Lady Bridget saw little Tommy run excitedly up to deliver her message, and almost cried out to him to keep away from the horses' heels, to which he went perilously near. As things happened, the beast lashed out at him, and Tommy had a very narrow escape of being badly kicked. Lady Bridget heard Mrs Hensor shriek and saw her husband drag the child to the veranda and examine him anxiously, Mrs Hensor bending with him. Then McKeith lifted up Tommy and kissed and patted him almost as if he had been the boy's father. It always gave Bridget a queer little spasm of regret to see Colin's obvious affection for the little fellow. He was fond of children, specially so of this one. Lady Bridget knew, though he had never said so to her, that he was disappointed at there being no apparent prospect of her having a child.

And she—with her avidity for any new sort of sensation, although she scoffed at the joy of maternity—felt secretly inclined sometimes to gird at fate for having so far denied her this experience. She herself liked Tommy in her contradictory, whimsical fashion; but now, the fuss over, the boy—who clearly was not in the least hurt—made her very cross, and she became positively furious at seeing McKeith delay yet further to unstrap his valise and get out a toy he must have bought for Tommy in Tunumburra. Then, his grievance aparently coming back on him, he put the child abruptly aside, and leaving valise and horse at the Bachelors' Quarters, walked with determined steps and frowning visage down the track to the veranda. There, his wife was standing, very pale, very erect, her eyes glittering ominously.

McKeith was through the gate and up the flight of steps in three or four strides.

He seemed to sense the antagonism in her, and demanded at once, without waiting to give her any greeting.

'Biddy, what's this I'm hearing about Wombo and that gin?'

'I think you might have asked me before going to Mrs Hensor for information,' she answered with equal curtness.

He stared at her for a moment or two as if surprised; his face reddened, and his eyes, too, glittered.

'I don't know what you mean. I had to speak to Mrs Hensor about beds being wanted up there, and of course I asked her how things had been going on.'

'And did she tell you that she had been inhuman and insolent?'

'Inhuman... Insolent!'

'She spoke to me impudently. She defied my orders.'

'I am given to understand that she was carrying out mine,' said McKeith slowly. 'And if that's so, Mrs Hensor was in the right.'

'You put that woman before ME—before your wife?'

'There's not another woman in the universe I'd put before my wife. But that's no reason for my giving in to her when she does what I know to be folly.'

'I see. You call an act of common humanity folly—doing what one could to relieve the agony of a fellow creature. I am glad that I differ from you—and from your servant. Mrs Hensor refused to help that poor gin who had a spear through her arm and was shrieking with pain.'

'Oh, you don't know black-gins as well as I do. They'll pretend they're dying in agony just to wheedle a drop of rum or a fig of tobacco out of a white man; and they'll take it quite as a matter of course when one of their men bashes their head in with a NULLA-NULLA.'

'I suppose you'll allow that a spear wound may hurt a little,' said Bridget. 'I believe that you yourself suffered from the effect of one at least, you once told me so.'

And memory—so active these late days, brought suddenly back the vision of him as he had approached her that evening at Government House. What a great Viking he had looked!—in modern dress, of course, but bearing mark of battle in a slight drag of the left leg, only noticeable, she knew now, when he was shy and proud, and under, to him, difficult social conditions. But what a MAN she had felt him to be then, among the other men!

It seemed an outrage on her idealised image of him to hear him speaking in that dry, caustic manner.

'Ah, that's different. The Gulf natives have a nasty way of barbing and poisoning their spears. An ordinary spear-thrust is nothing to either black or white. Wombo could have pulled the thing out, and in a few hours the gin would have been all right again.'

'You think so—well in a few hours she was in a high fever. I took her temperature this morning when I re-bandaged the wound.'

McKeith laughed shortly.

'It wouldn't be surprising, if you had given her grog and tobacco and as much meat as she wanted. That what you did, eh?'

'Yes, it was. They were both starving.'

'Well, I wouldn't bank on your stock of medical knowledge, Biddy—not if I was down with fever or otherwise incapacitated. But that's not the point—which is that those blacks have been kept here against my express orders.'

'They've been kept here by MY orders,' flamed Lady Bridget.

McKeith's jaw squared, and there showed in his eyes that ugly devil which many a black and white man had seen, but never his wife before.

'Look here, milady—there can be only one boss on this station. And now you'll excuse me if I act according to my own discretion.'

Without another word he walked up the veranda and down the few steps connecting it with the Old Humpey. She heard him go into his office, and presently the door of it slammed behind him. She knew that he was going to the culprits in the hide-house, and wondered what punishment he would mete unto them. Had he gone to the office for his gun? At this moment, anything seemed possible to Lady Bridget's heated temper and excited imagination.

She stood waiting, absorbed in her fears, so abstracted from her ordinary outside surroundings that she was unaware of the approach of two horsemen from the Gully Crossing. They did not stop at the garden gate, but made for the usual station entrance at the back. One of them, lingering behind the other, gazed earnestly at Lady Bridget's tense little figure and bent head, poised in a listening attitude and conveying to him the impression that something momentous had happened or was about to happen. And just then, appalling shrieks, from the rear of the home, justified the impression.

Lady Bridget ran through the sitting-room to the veranda behind, which again connected on either side the new house with the Old Humpey and kitchen and store-wing—the hide-house standing slightly apart at the end of the store building. The shrieks in male and female keys came from the hide-house and mingled with McKeith's strident tones fulminating in Blacks' lingo. The noise brought Mrs Hensor and Tommy down from the Bachelors' Quarters, and the Chinese cook, the Malay boy and Maggie the housemaid from the service department. The three verandas and garden plot made a kind of amphitheatre; and now, into the arena, came the actors in the little tragedy.

From the hide-house, McKeith dragged the prisoners, and through the gateway in the palings which made the fourth side of the enclosure. With one hand he clutched Wombo, with the other Oola, who in her lace-trimmed petticoat and flowered kimono was truly a tragi-comic spectacle.

McKeith carried his coiled stockwhip in the hand which held Wombo. It was plain, judging from the state of Wombo's new shirt, that he had given the black boy a thrashing; Oola was unscathed. Of course, Colin could not lift his hand to a woman, though he was a brute and the woman only a black-gin. Lady Bridget felt faintly glad at this.

She watched the scene, half fascinated, half disgusted, all her attention concentrated on these three figures. She had but a dim consciousness of two men riding round the store-wing and dismounting. One of the two remained in the background screened by the trails of native cucumber overhanging the veranda end. The other—a wiry, powerful figure in uniform, with a rubicund face, black bristling moustache and beard and prominent black eyes, reminding one of the eyes of a bull—walked forward and spoke with an air of official assurance.

'Can I be of any use to you, Mr McKeith, in dealing with that nigger? A bad character, as I've reason to know.'

'No, thank you, Harris. I can do my own dirty jobs,' said McKeith shortly.

He had released the pair and now stood grimly surveying them. Oola was crying and squealing; Wombo stood upright—a scowl of hate on his face. His whole nature seemed changed. A flogging will rouse the semi-civilised black's evil passions like nothing else. There was something of savage dignity in the defiant way in which he faced his former master.

'What for you been take-it stockwhip long-a me? BA'AL me bad black boy long-a you, Boss. What for me no have 'em gin belonging to me? Massa catch 'im bujeri White Mary like it gin belonging to him. What for no all same black fellow?'

McKeith cut short the argument—sound logic it seemed to Lady Biddy—by an imperious, silencing gesture, and a sudden unfurling of his stockwhip, which made a hissing sound as it writhed along the ground like a snake. The black boy sprang aside. McKeith pointed to the gidia scrub and issued a terse command in the native language.

'YAN' (go). 'BA'AL YOU WOOLLA' (don't talk any more). 'YAN.'

Wombo turned appealingly to Lady Bridget.

'Lathychap!'

'YAN,' stormed McKeith again, and, as Lady Bridget made a movement of sympathetic response towards the black fellow, he added sternly: 'You'll oblige me by not interfering in this business. The Blacks know that what I say, I mean, and I'll have no more words with them.'

Bridget stood quite still, her attitude and expression all indignant protest, but she said nothing. Her face was turned full towards the man hidden by the creepers, who was watching her with intense interest, but she was unconscious of his gaze.

Wombo retreated slowly. Oola, cowed, whimpering, behind him. Then, she made an appeal to Lady Bridget, stretching out her unbandaged arm imploringly.

'White Mary—you PIDNEY (understand). That fellow medsin man—husband belonging to me. Him come close-up long-a srub—throw 'im spear, NULLA-NULLA—plenty look out Wombo. BA'AL, Wombo got 'im spear—ba'al got 'im NULLA-NULLA. Suppose black fellow catch 'im Wombo—my word! that fellow MUMKULL (kill). Wombo—mumkull Oola—altogether BONG (dead). YUCKE! YUCKE! Lathychap suppose Massa let Wombo sit down long-a head-station—two day, three day—black fellow get tired—up stick—no more look out. No catch 'im Wombo. Lathychap!' she pleaded, 'BUJERI you PIALLA (intercede with) Boss.'

Lady Bridget came down the steps from the veranda and went up to McKeith.

'Colin, what the gin says is true. Her tribe will kill them, and they have no weapons and no means of protection. Will you, as a favour to me, let them stay for a few days? At least, till her arm is healed and the danger past?'

McKeith hesitated perceptibly, then the consciousness of weakening resolve made him harden himself the more, made his speech rougher than it might have been.

'No, I can't, Biddy. I never break my word. They've GOT to go.'

He turned fiercely on Wombo, who stood sullen and defiant again, and from him to Oola, who crouched in the dust, sobbing pitifully and rubbing her damaged arm.

'Plenty me sick, Boss—close up TUMBLEDOWN' (die), she wailed.

'Stop that! YAN—do you hear? YAN—YAN—BURRI—BURRI—' (go quickly).

The whip lashed out again. It stung Wombo's bare leg, and flicked Oola's petticoat. The two ran screaming lustily towards the rocks and scrubby country at the head of the gully.

Lady Bridget uttered a shuddering exclamation and made an impetuous movement with arms partly outstretched as if to follow the pair. Then her arms dropped and she stood stock still.

There was a dead silence. In all the relations of husband and wife, never had there been a moment more crucial as affecting their ultimate future. They looked at each other unflinchingly, neither speaking. McKeith's lips were resolute, locked, his pugnacious jaw set like iron. Here was the stubborn determination of a fighting man, never to admit himself in the wrong. And his eyes seemed to have a steel curtain over them—which, however, had Bridget's spiritual intuition been awake to perceive it, softened for an instant, letting through a gleam of passionate appeal.

But Bridget's soul was steel-cased also. He saw only contempt, repulsion in her gaze. The larger issues narrowed to a conflict of two egoisms. It seemed to both as though, in the space of that last quarter of an hour, they had become mortal foes.

The police inspector broke in upon the tense silence. Here was another egoism to be reckoned with—malevolently officious.

'They'll be hiding in the gully, Mr McKeith. No fear of them taking to the outside bush with the tribe hanging round. I'll just round 'em up and drive 'em into the scrub and strike the fear of the Law into them. I'll do it now before I turn out my horse into the paddock.'

'No,' flamed Lady Bridget. 'You'll leave those unfortunate creatures alone—or—if you molest them—whether it's by my husband's permission or not—well—you'll find I'm a bad hater, Mr Harris.'

The police inspector flushed a deep red.

'Maybe I'm not such a bad hater either, my lady—but with my respects....'

'That will do, Harris,' interposed McKeith. 'I told you that I'd do my own dirty jobs. There's no occasion for you to go against her ladyship's wishes.'

Harris touched his helmet to Lady Bridget and, leering with veiled enmity, replied:

'I'm never one to put myself up against the ladies, except where my duty comes first—and that's not the case—yet. But as I was saying, with my respects, my lady, Mr McKeith knows very well how to treat the blacks. He knows that you've got to keep your word to them, whether that means a plug of tobacco or a plug of cold iron.'

Lady Bridget drew back and looked at Harris for a second or two with an expression of the most withering haughtiness. Then, without a word she turned her back on him. The inspector infuriated, muttered in his throat. McKeith interposed sharply:

'Bridget, Harris is going to stay the night.'

'Ah! at the Bachelors' Quarters,' Lady Bridget smiled with distant calm. 'Of course, Mrs Hensor knows. I'm sorry I can't ask Mr Harris to dinner at the house this evening.'

Now, by the social canons of the Bush, the police inspector, being technically speaking of higher grade than the casual traveller, should have been accepted as a 'parlour visitor.' He would thus have occupied one of the bachelor spare rooms in the Old Humpey and would have joined the Boss and his wife at dinner. Harris had never before stayed the night at Moongarr, and he had confidently expected to be received with honour. Thus he regarded Lady Bridget's speech as an insult.

'Oh, I'm not one to force my company where it is not wanted,' he blustered. 'I'm quite content with a shake-down at the Quarters, though if I'd known I might have gone by the short cut with the Specials—it's rather late, however, to push on to Breeza Downs, where—though perhaps I say it as shouldn't—I'm sure of a welcome from Mr and Mrs Windeatt, being, so to speak—for law and order—the representative of His Majesty in the Leura district.'

Lady Bridget smiled with detached amusement, as she turned again and patted the head of an elderly kangaroo dog, which came up to her with its tongue out and a look of wistful enquiry in its bleared eyes, scenting plainly that something was amiss. 'Good dog, Veno,' she murmured.

Harris bridled.

'I'll bid you good evening then, my lady,' he said stiffly. 'No doubt, Mr McKeith, you'll spare me half an hour in the office by and by. Just to concert our measures for the proper protection of the Pastoralists and the safeguarding of the woolsheds this shearing season.'

'Yes, yes, or course,' McKeith answered mechanically. The spunk had gone out of him, as Harris would have phrased it; and the Inspector, looking at Lady Bridget, guessed the reason.

'And what now about the gentleman from Leichardt's Town, Mr McKeith? Will I be taking him up with me to the Bachelor's Quarters? Or may be,' Harris added unpleasantly, 'her ladyship won't object to having him in the house.'

McKeith muttered angrily, 'Damn! I'd forgotten.'

It was not like him to lose himself during working hours in even a momentary fit of abstraction—except, indeed, when he was riding without immediate objective through the Bush. His eyes were still upon his wife's slight figure as she moved slowly towards the veranda, with the air of one who has no more concern with the business in hand. Her graceful aloofness, which he knew to be merely a social trick, stung him inexpressibly, the faint bow she had given Harris when he bade her good evening had seemed to include himself. It galled him that he did not seem fitted by nature or breeding to cope with this kind of situation. The half consciousness of inferiority put him still more at disadvantage with himself.

'Biddy, wait please,' he said dictatorially.

She paused at the steps, her hand on the railings, her eyes under their lowered lids ignoring him.

He went closer and spoke rapidly in a harsh undertone.

'I didn't tell you—though I rode ahead on purpose—I met a man at Tunumburra who said he knew you. He's out from England—been staying at Government House, and brought a letter from Sir Luke Tallant. I hope that at any rate you'll be civil to him.'

She flashed a quick glance at him, and her eyelids dropped again.

'But naturally. I'm not in the habit of being uncivil to—my friends.'

And just then—Mrs Hensor, who loved cheap fiction, said afterwards it was all like a scene out of a book—there appeared in the space between the two wings, a man who had strolled unobserved from one side, out of the background of creepers, and who advanced with quickened step to where the husband and wife stood.