'But isn't Dr. Langdale there? He was here the day before yesterday, and didn't say a word of leaving for any length of time.'
'He is at Nareen, staying with the Kenleighs. You know, they worship the ground he walks on since he performed that wonderfully successful operation on Mark.'
'Do you think he'll really stay in Australia, Mrs. Courtland?' said Miss Morton.
'I do not know,' answered that lady; 'I am afraid not. You see, it was not to stay he came, but for a year's change and rest.'
'But then he's always writing—he must be writing a book,' said the young lady. 'I asked Mrs. Morrison the other week whether he wasn't, but she only shook her head and smiled. I don't know why some people are so fond of making secrets of things. Either he is or he is not. Why shouldn't she say "Yes" or "No"?'
'Perhaps she doesn't really know,' answered Louise, smiling. She knew that anything in the nature of a secret was abhorrent to Miss Morton, who loved nothing so well as talking of other people's affairs, except talking of her own. She was a tall, good-looking young woman of twenty-five, with large brown eyes, a brilliant complexion, and that stamp of figure which milliners call 'stylish.'
The visitors stayed for many hours in the friendly leisurely fashion of neighbours in the Bush, who are separated by fifteen miles of unpeopled woods. Miss Morton had three weeks previously returned from a visit to her brother, Mr. John Morton, coming back by way of Melbourne, where she had stayed a couple of days with Mrs. Tareling.
'I would have seen you there,' she said to Stella, 'only you were so long in coming. Laurette thought you were going to give her up altogether. What a dear Laurette is, to be sure!'
To this Stella assented, in the facile way in which we all help to swell social fictions.
'I do not feel as if I remembered much of my new sister-in-law. Is Helen like Julia at all?' Stella asked a little hesitatingly, after the Mortons had gone.