She was preoccupied with thoughts of checkmating Talbot's secret plans, and withal profoundly grateful that she was freed from the haunting fear of being forced to retire to the wilds of the Australian Bush, instead of shining in her proper orbit. She remembered the learned judge's words with a fresh glow of gratitude, and recalled with solemn approval a maxim she had somewhere heard or read, that we can benefit others in no surer way than by making the best of our own lives. How true this was as applied to herself! The best use she could make of her life was certainly to maintain her position in Melbourne society until she might perhaps be called on to take her place among the titled aristocracy of England. And in her efforts to keep this position she was securing Ted's happiness, protecting Stella from the danger of entanglement with a married man, and, most important of all, in a way to thwart the wild folly of her husband and the father of her children. Being in a very wakeful, active-minded mood, she wrote several letters to members of the Courtland family. She begged pardon in a pretty, winning way for siding wholly with Stella and Ted in the arrangement of being married in time to leave by the sixteenth of October. This was partly because of business arrangements which compelled Ted to leave by that date, partly because, after all that had passed, prompt action was best. She was taking the liberty of seeing to Stella's trousseau so as to save time: not that it would be a very extensive affair; why should it? She had so many pretty dresses, and she was going to the great centres of fashion, etc., etc.
CHAPTER XLII.
Breakfast was late next morning at Monico Lodge, and the master of the house did not make his appearance. There were times when he simply haunted the place—being quite the closest approximation to a ghost the neighbourhood could produce. It might, however, be urged by the charitably inclined that his notions of day and night had been seriously upset by having spent most of his life at the antipodes—being thirty-one years of age when he left England six years previously.
'I wrote my letter to your mother this morning, Stella—I want you just to look over it,' said Ted, as they rose from the table.
Laurette was deep in arrangements for her ball, and left the young people to themselves in a little morning apartment off the breakfast-room.
'And mind, Stella, directly after lunch we must go to see about your dresses,' she said—an announcement which Stella received with incredulous amazement.
'Stella, have you got a conscience?' asked Ted, as she ensconced herself in an armchair behind a davenport by the window.
'Yes, occasionally; but it's good to let sleeping dogs lie,' said Stella; and then, seeing Ted's aggrieved face, she held out her hand to him. 'You may kiss the little finger, Ted, who was a traitor on your side when there wasn't a cloud in the sky.'
'But sooner or later, you know, Stella——'
'Ah, later then! Now, what have you written?'