‘Not a bit of bother there need be about it, that I can see, sir. We shall have lots of help; every stockman within a hundred miles will be there. There’ll be an awful big mob of strangers; and the Drewarrina poundkeeper hasn’t had such a lift for many a day as he’ll get. We must square the tails of every beast that’s counted, that’s one thing, so as not to have ’em played on to us twice over. I think Mr. Banks is down to most moves about cattle work, and what he don’t know I can tell him. Good-bye, sir.’
‘By the way, John,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, ‘I shall want you to stay in town this evening, if you can spare so much time away from Carry. I have to see about the draft copy of the sale agreement, which you will take up with you and give to Mr. Banks. Mr. Frankston informs me that these agreements need to be very strictly carried out, and that advantageous purchases have been evaded from neglect in doing so. So come out to Morahmee this afternoon, when you can have my final instructions.’
Mr. Neuchamp spent the morning in tolerably close attendance upon lawyers and persons addicted to the drawing up of those paper and parchment promises which, if honour were binding, need never to have troubled penman or engrosser. Nathless, human nature being what it is, and retaining simian tendencies to steal, hide, falsely chatter and closely clutch, the sheepskin may not be safely relinquished. Before Mr. Neuchamp bethought himself of the mid-day solace of lunch he was possessed of a legal document, wherein the exact time granted for mustering and several other leading conditions were set forth with such clearness that evasion or misunderstanding seemed impossible.
A copy of this all-important document was posted to Charley Banks; he brought with him another for the use of Mr. Windsor, who might employ his leisure time on the journey up in learning it by heart, and so render himself able to meet all comers respecting its provisions.
Antonia had expressed a wish to see Jack Windsor, and to send a message to his wife before he left town. For this reason chiefly Ernest had appointed Morahmee as the rendezvous on this particular afternoon. As the shadows lengthened, Mr. Neuchamp betook himself in that direction, as indeed he had done daily for weeks past.
It so chanced that, on the evening before, Antonia had received a pink triangular note from Miss Harriet Folleton, who was more or less a friend of hers, to say that she intended to come and lunch with her next day at Morahmee, and would be there, unless her dear Antonia wrote to say she couldn’t have her. There was not any great similitude of taste or disposition between the two girls—one indeed much disapproved of the other. But those who have noted the ways of their monde will not decide from this statement that Antonia Frankston and Harriet Folleton did any the less greet one another with kisses and effusion when meeting, or say farewell with lavish use of endearing epithets.
Such being the state of matters, it was by no means surprising that Harriet Folleton, a girl of great beauty and soft, enthralling manner, but of so moderate a development of intellect that she might have been called, if any one had been so rudely uncompromising as to speak the unvarnished truth about so pretty a creature, ‘a fool proper,’ should arrive in the paternal brougham before mid-day, and therefore share luncheon with her dear Antonia in much innocence and peace.
It would have been even less surprising to any one who had possessed the requisite leisure and opportunity to study that fair girl’s ways, that, as the two friends were strolling near the strand, where a giant fig-tree shadowed half the little bay, a boat should pull round the adjoining headland, manned by four man-of-war-looking yachtsmen, with the White Falcon on their breasts and hat-ribbons, while from the boat, as she ran up to the jetty, stepped the gracious form of Count von Schätterheims.
‘Why, you naughty girl,’ said Antonia, instantly divining the ruse, ‘I do believe you planned to meet the Count here, and disobey your father. So this coming to see me was all deception! How dare you treat me like this? I have a great mind to tell your father, and never speak to you again.’
‘Oh, pray don’t, Antonia dearest,’ whimpered the softly insincere one, ‘I only said I might be here this afternoon; and he said he was going off to Batavia, or Russia, or India, or somewhere. And papa was so dreadful, that I thought there was no harm in it. I shall never see him again—oh!’ Here the despairingly undecided damsel commenced to weep, and so interfere with the natural charms of her fine and uncommon complexion, that Antonia, inwardly resolving to restrict the acquaintance to conventional limits in future, was constrained to soothe and console her. Meanwhile the Count, who had been engaged in an earnest colloquy with his crew, advanced with his customary gallantry to meet them.