"I am sure you think so. I am sure you see that that is all we can do for her now. Good morning. I am much obliged to you for your kindness. It looks rather as if we were going to have a storm, does it not? The air is close and sultry, and the glass is falling very fast."
He turned from looking out of the window and made a stately bow; she laid her hand upon the bell mechanically—she had no arts wherewith to keep him; and in another minute he had passed out of the house, and the door was shut upon him. The interview which was to have had such great results was over.
We have heard it said of a pioneer colonist, lessee of a Crown-land principality, that, after bearing the reverses of fortune which, with the advent of free selectors, overwhelmed him, the loss of land and stock and the accumulated treasure of toilsome and prosperous years, with the fortitude and equanimity of a gentleman, he was broken down at last by the unspeakable humiliation of the circumstance that he had "lived to hear himself called a boss-cocky."
Mrs. Reade had not only been defied and defeated, and made to feel small and ridiculous in her own drawing-room, where never man or woman—man, especially—had never dared dispute her supremacy; but she had lived to hear herself called, or at any rate to find herself considered, a gossip—a common tattler and busybody, who intrigued in other people's private affairs from the vulgar feminine love of meddling—and the blow was equally bitter.
She stood in the bow window of her drawing-room, and watched the tall figure leisurely striding through the garden as if South Yarra and the adjacent suburbs were but a small part of his possessions; taking in all the details of his strong majestic figure, his thin, dark, proud face, with its immense moustache, the perfection of his quiet dress, and the repose and dignity of his bearing generally, and of every distinct movement that he made—even when trying to open a gate with a mysterious fastening, at which most people fumbled and bungled awkwardly.
But she was not consumed with a passion of angry resentment against him for the indignities and humiliations that he had heaped upon her. No, she was filled with a vague but intense respect and admiration for him, a feeling that she had never before entertained for any individual of his sex.
She did not say it to herself in so many words, but the thought of her heart undoubtedly was that here was the man, who as a husband, would just have suited her.
