So she began to go about with miscellaneous escorts, to play the combined parts of frisky matron and society beauty—an intoxicating experience; while the supporter of that proud position played the humble role of chief comer-stone, unseen and unconsidered in the basement of the fabric. He attended to his investments and increasing infirmities, and made secret visits to a married daughter (wife of a big hotel-keeper), who hated her young step-mother, and whose existence Frances ignored.
One day, Guthrie Carey, after several voyages to other ports, appeared again in Melbourne. He had just landed, and was strolling along Collins Street, when he encountered a vision of loveliness that almost took away his breath.
"What! It is not Miss Frances, surely?"
"It is not," smiled she, all her beauty at its conscious best as she recognised his, which was that of a man of men, splendid in his strong prime. And she told him who she was, and a few other things, as they stood on the pavement—she so graceful in her mature self-possession, he staring at her, stupidly distraught, like a bewildered school-boy.
"I had no idea—" he mumbled.
"That I was married? Alas, yes!"—with a sad shake of the head. "We girls are fated, I think."
"Miss Deb?"
"Oh, not Deb; she has escaped so far."
"Is she well?"
"I have not seen her lately, but I am sure she is, she always is." "She is not in Melbourne?"