"Come on!" said Olivia suddenly; and as she went, she never looked behind; for she seemed to feel her mother's eyes upon her from an upper window, and the hot shame of their certain approval made her tingle from head to foot. So she trod the close, fine, sunlit grass as far as possible from her companion's side. And he, falling back a little, was enabled to watch her all the way.
Olivia was very ordinarily attired. She wore a crisp white blouse, speckled with tiny scarlet spots, and a plain skirt of navy blue, just short enough to give free play to the small brown shoes whose high heels the Duke had admired in the portico. Two scarlet bands, a narrow and a broad, encircled her straw hat and her waist, with much the same circumference: and yet this exceedingly average costume struck Jack as the most delicious thing imaginable of its kind. He corrected another impression before they reached the lake. Olivia was taller than he had thought; she was at least five-feet-six; and she carried her slim, trim figure in a fine upstanding fashion that took some of the roundness out of his own shoulders as he noted it this August morning.
"It's the back-block bend," he remarked elliptically, in the boat.
His way with the oars was inelegant enough, without a pretence at feathering; but it was quite effectual; and Olivia, in the stern-sheets, had her back still presented to the Argus-eyes of the Towers. She answered him with a puzzled look, as well she might, for he had done no more than think aloud.
"What is that?" she said. "And what are the back-blocks; and what do you mean?" for her puzzled look had lifted on a smile.
"I was thinking of my round shoulders. You get them through being all your time in the saddle, up in the back-blocks. All the country in Riverina—that is, all the fenced country—is split up into ten-mile blocks. And the back-blocks are the farthest from the rivers and from civilisation. So that's why they call it the back-block bend; it came into my head through seeing you. I never saw anybody hold themselves so well, Miss Sellwood—if it isn't too like my cheek to say so!"
The keel grounded as he spoke, and Olivia, as he handed her out, saw the undulating battlements and toppling turrets of the olden pile upside-down in the tremulous mirror of the lake. A moment later the pine-trees had closed around her; and, sure enough, in a distant window, Lady Caroline Sellwood lowered her opera-glasses with a sigh of exceeding great contentment.
"So you haven't forgotten your old life yet," said the girl, as they stepped out briskly across the shortening shadows of the pines. "I wish you would tell me something about it! I have heard it said that you lived in ever such a little hut, away by yourself in the wilderness."
"I did so; and in a clump of pines the dead spit of these here," said Jack, with a relish. "When I saw these pines you can't think how glad I was! They were like old friends to me; they made me feel at home. You see, Miss Sellwood, that old life is the only one I ever knew, bar this; often enough it seems the reallest of the two. Most nights I dream I'm out there again; last night, for instance, we were lamb-marking. A nasty job, that; I was covered with blood from head to heels, and I was just counting the poor little beggars' tails, when one of the dead tails wriggled in my hand, and blowed if it wasn't Livingstone's! No, there's no forgetting the old life; I was at it too long; it's this one that's most like a dream."
"And the hut," said Olivia, with a rather wry face; "what sort of a place was that?"