'Lady Bridget O'Hara, let me present Mr Colin McKeith.'
Lady Biddy looked up at Colin and he looked down at her.
'Do you think I can POSSIBLY reach your arm?' as he held his elbow crooked to about the level of her shoulder. 'You know I asked to be sent in with you—it was rather bold of me, wasn't it? But if I had known how VERY tall you are!'
Mr McKeith lowered his arm, stooping over her, and Mrs Gildea heard him say in a voice that sounded different somehow from his ordinary deep drawl:
'I wonder why I was chosen for this honour?'
And Bridget's reply:
'I'd been told that you were an explorer—that you're a kind of Bush Cecil Rhodes—I don't know Mr Cecil Rhodes, but I have an adoration for him—I wanted to talk to a real Bushman—I always felt that I should like Australian Bushmen from Joan Gildea's description of them.... And you....'
The rest was lost, as the groups converged and the long line of couples went forward.
CHAPTER 9
It was not an altogether successful party. The dinner had portentous suggestiveness; the Leidchardt'stonians were at first rather difficult. Sir Luke a little too conscious of his responsibilities towards the British Throne: Lady Tallant so brilliant as to be bewildering. But except as it concerns Lady Bridget and McKeith, the Tallant's first dinner-party at Government House is not of special importance in this story. Mrs Gildea, very well occupied with Dr Plumtree, only caught diagonal glimpses of her two friends a little lower down on the opposite side of the table, and, in occasional lulls of conversation, the musical ring of Lady Bridget's rapid chatter. Colin did not seem to be talking much, but every time Mrs Gildea glanced at him, he appeared absorbed in contemplation of the small pointed face and the farouche, golden-brown eyes turned up to him from under the top heavy mass of chestnut hair. Lady Bridget, at any rate, had a great deal to say for herself, and Mrs Gildea wondered what was going to come of it all.