'Always when you have been to Melbourne you harp more and more on your money.'
'Maybe. You see, the more you see of the world the more you find how much people think of money, and how much it gets for you.'
'And yet to be poor in the midst of riches is the worst kind of poverty.'
'But you see,' said the young man eagerly, misinterpreting the drift of this remark, 'Strathhaye is none of your big leasehold affairs. It's nearly all freehold—a good deal of it fit to carry three or four sheep to the acre—where never a cockatoo nor a free selector dare show his nose.'
'Oh, I feel as if I knew every inch of Strathhaye!'
'Well, a good tale is none the worse for being twice told. Besides, I am coming to the point. You might marry for love to-morrow, and in a few months find you were quite insolvent in the article—have to pay a bob in the pound, or even less.'
'True—become an utter bankrupt; such things happen.'
'Yes; there was your friend Cicely Mowbray——'
'Oh, please don't!' said Stella, in a tone of quick pain.
'Well, not speaking of things doesn't make them different. You know how completely gone she was on the man she married; and in less than three years she ran off with another fellow!'