Now she was going where it seemed to her her lover would never be allowed to reach her, and where in a hard world of money and fashion, and under the terrible dominion of "the house," she would be a helpless victim in the hands of Fate.
"Good-bye, darling Lucilla!" she sobbed; "thank you so much—I have been so happy here—I am so sorry to go away!"
The gentle woman was inexpressibly touched, and of course cried for company. Mrs. Hardy had her own maternal reluctance to face an indefinite term of separation from her daughter. And altogether Mr. Kingston was not without justification for his unusually irritable frame of mind.
He did not like to see women crying; he was particularly annoyed that Rachel should exercise so little command over herself, and that she should have red eyes and a swollen nose; and he was uneasy about the untoward episode which had been the first hitch in the smooth current of his engagement, and wondered whether it could be possible that a lingering fancy for that Dalrymple fellow was making her so unwilling to return to her Melbourne life.
Moreover, he hated country travelling—long drives over rough bush roads, and bivouacs at country inns, where the food was badly cooked and the wine detestable; and he was suspicious about the behaviour of the Adelonga horses, whose little traits of character came out rather strongly in the invigorating air of spring; and he had a nasty touch of gout.
However, the day was fine, and the drive was lovely. As she was carried along, with the soft air blowing in her face, full of the delicious fragrance of golden wattle, Rachel ceased to cry—becoming calm, and pensive, and pretty again—and took to meditation; wondering, for the most part, what Queensland was like, and how it was she could ever have thought Melbourne, as a place of residence, preferable to the bush.
They passed a charming little farmhouse, more picturesque in the simple elegance of its slab walls and brown bark roof than any Toorak villa of them all, set in its little patch of garden, with fields of young green corn and potatoes, neatly fenced in, behind it. It had its little rustic outbuildings, its bright red cart in the shed, its tidy strawyard, its cows and pigs and poultry feeding in the bush close by.
The farmer was working in his garden; the farmer's wife, on her knees beside him, was weeding and trimming the borders of thyme that ringed the little flower beds. They both paused to gaze at the imposing equipage crashing along with its four strong horses, and at the ladies and gentlemen perched so high above them; and Rachel, looking down from her box-seat, thought she had never seen such a picture of rural and domestic peace. She had suddenly ceased to regard material wealth and splendour as in any way essential to happiness.
To live in some such home as this (provided one had enough to live on and to pay one's way), working with one's own hands for the man one loved—that seemed to her at this moment the ideal lot in life.
Having started from Adelonga an hour before noon, the horses were taken out at two o'clock to be fed and watered, and the little party camped beside a shady water-hole for lunch.