'I am not in the least tired,' replied Estelle. 'And now that my departure is decided upon I am ready for anything.'

So the carriage was ordered out—a costly enough equipage in those days of unexampled enhancement of prices—the three-hundred-guinea pair of horses that consumed oats at twelve shillings a bushel and hay at seventy pounds a ton, driven by a coachman at three pounds a week. But Mr. Vernon was a merchant who had made one fortune by the lucky cargoes of mining necessaries, and was fast making another by gold-buying. Such an additional item of expense as a carriage for his wife was the merest bagatelle.

So the ladies drove to St. Kilda for a breath of sea air, taking the Botanic Gardens on their way back, where there was a flower-show patronised by His Excellency, Mr. Latrobe, and all the rank and fashion of the metropolis, chiefly represented by a few squatters and club men, with a sprinkling of gold commissioners on leave.

Mrs. Vernon was not averse to the company of so distinctly aristocratic-looking a damsel as Estelle Chaloner, whose appearance, quietly dressed as she was, elicited, in that day of matrimonial competition and proportional scarcity of young ladies, endless admiring comment.

At dinner, for which they had barely time to dress, they were enlivened by the society of Mr. Vernon—a shrewd, good-humoured mercantile personage—and a gentleman whom he introduced as Mr. Annesley and described as a Goldfields Commissioner. This last was a very good-looking and correctly dressed young man, not long from England. He was in Melbourne, on leave after twelve months' hard work on the diggings, according to his own account, and had some flavour of the high spirits and abounding cheerfulness of the naval officer on shore about him. His host 'drew' him judiciously about mining life and adventure, on which he was by no means loath to enlarge. He was evidently gratified by the intense interest with which Estelle listened to his amusing and justifiably egotistic rattle, and in the innocence of his heart essayed to complete her subjugation. But, to Estelle's intense regret, he did not come from Ballarat—'had been quartered in quite a different district.' She was deeply interested in him, however, as marking a type with which Lance must necessarily have often come into contact, and she concluded an agreeable evening, widely different from her expectation of things Australian, with an assurance from Mr. Vernon that he would bring her a budget of definite information about Ballarat and its social condition on the morrow.

Had she been in a position to listen to the conversation of her host and his guest when she and Mrs. Vernon had retired for the night, and the gentlemen had adjourned to the smoking-room, she would have scarce slept so soundly.

'Lance Trevanion? of course I had heard of the beggar,' said the Commissioner, as he threw himself back in a settee and lighted one of Mr. Vernon's choice cigars. 'We had a fellow from Ballarat staying at the camp at Morrison's who had been at the trial and knew all about him. But how could I tell the poor thing? What a sweet girl she is, by the way! why, she'll have half Melbourne pursuing her with proposals if she only lets them see her. Don't know when I've seen such a girl since I left England. Why she should bother her head about Trevanion now, I can't imagine.'

'Well, he's her cousin, my wife tells me, for one thing. They were engaged, it seems, too, before he left home. Sad pity that such a girl should spoil her chances here and throw herself away. But that's their nature, we all know. Tell us the tale, Annesley; I never heard.'

'As it was told to me, this was about it. This fellow Trevanion, a good-looking, well-set-up youngster, seems to have been a bad lot or a d—d fool, one can hardly say which. Anyhow, he was fond of play, and got mixed up with a crooked Sydney-side crowd. There was a girl in it, of course. They won from him, it was said. He, like a young fool, thought he might choose his own company at an Australian diggings, "all people out here being alike," or some such rot. The end of it was that he was run in for horse-stealing, or having a stolen horse in his possession. Got two years. I've heard since that he was the wrong man, but the Sergeant—queer card and deuced dangerous, that Dayrell—wanted a case—the diggers had lost so many horses that they wanted a conviction. So poor Trevanion had to pay for all.'

'What an infernal shame!' said Mr. Vernon. 'Couldn't anything be done for him?'