Just after sunrise next morning, Dolly, who had spent the night in tears and repentance, woke, feeling very miserable. From her opened window she could see the morning mists hanging over the placid waters of the harbour disappearing before the first breaths of the coming south-easter. The Policy, she thought, could not have sailed yet, and she meant to send her lover a note, asking him to come and see her again before he left. Then she gave a little cry and sob, and her eyes filled with tears. Far down the harbour she could see the sails of the Policy just disappearing round a wooded headland.
An hour or so after breakfast, as Dolly was at work among her flowers, the tall figure of Sergeant Burt stood before her, and saluted—
“The Policy has sailed, Miss Scarsbrook,” said the Sergeant, “and I have brought you a letter.”
“Indeed!” said Dolly, with an air of icy indifference, turning her back upon the soldier, and digging her trowel into a little heap of soil. “I do not take any interest in merchant ships, and do not want the letter.” When she glanced round again she was just in time to see Sergeant Burt standing in the roadway with a lot of tiny pieces of paper fluttering about his feet.
Something impelled her to ask: “What are you doing, Burt?”
“Mr. Foster's orders, Miss. Told me if you would not take the letter I was to destroy it.”
Dolly laid her trowel down and slowly went to her room “with a bad headache,” as she told her mother.
II
Nearly two years went by, and then one morning the look-out at the South Head of Sydney Harbour signalled a vessel to the north-east, and a few hours later the Policy was again at anchor in Sydney Cove, and Captain Foster was being warmly welcomed by the residents generally and Dolly's father in particular, who pressed him to come ashore that evening to dinner.