“And so the villain is to escape?”
“Well, he did not do me much harm after all, Pro, and he will get his desserts some day. All bad people do.”
“That is a very consoling theory for injured people who can obtain no redress, but I am afraid experience hardly warrants it. The stage villain may walk to the scaffold during five acts, but the every-day scoundrel is more often carried to Parliament by a carriage and pair. Have you no suspicion in your own mind as to who it was?”
“The girls in the bar think it was an old gentleman we call the Squatter. He certainly asked me to marry him, and offered me several rich presents at different times; but I hardly think he was the kind of man to have planned an outrage of this kind. It is strange, though, that he has not been seen in Sydney since the day I was taken away. But there, I am weary to death of talking on the subject! Let us speak of something else, Pro. I have left that horrible bar for ever, and I have some news for you. Now guess what it is?”
“You have found a new and wonderful dressmaker!”
“You horrid thing, as though I cared twopence about dress!”
“Then it is a new admirer who has told you that you are the prettiest girl in Sydney, and you have believed him.”
“That is really cruel of you, Pro? As though I cared what people said. You do not deserve to be told anything!”
“I will give up guessing then. Tell me what it is.”
“Alec—that is, Mr. Booth—has asked me to marry him.”