He passed carelessly into the parlour, where there were still a few people gathered around the fireplace. Putting his arm round her waist, he said jocularly, as he drew her towards him, 'So you have recovered from your fatigue. After our long separation, it seems awfully hard on me that we should see so little of each other.'

The storekeeper's wife smiled, and Miss Bessie giggled, as Estelle, blushing deeply, withdrew herself from his clasp, saying hurriedly, 'I don't think there's any necessity for being so affectionate in public. We have a great deal to talk over and decide to-day.'

It was a strange feeling that had come over her for the moment. Added to her natural dislike to such endearments before spectators of the class then present, a curious indefinable sensation of repulsion took possession of her temporarily, as strong as it was instinctive. He drew back, with a half-angry look; then, assuming an air of injured dignity, said, 'I ought to apologise. I forgot you hadn't been long out from home. We don't mind these trifles in Omeo. Do we, Mrs. Caldwell?'

'Not when people's engaged,' said the matron; while Miss Bessie tossed her head, and said, 'She thought all the gentlemen wanted keeping in their places; she'd let them know when she'd a young man of her own, that she would.'

All this was of course painful to Estelle; but fearing, from his changed expression, that she had hurt his feelings, she proceeded to make amends, after the manner of her sex, by hastily proffering concessions. The sudden thought of his melancholy life, of his wrongs and misfortunes, almost impelled her to beg his pardon in the humblest manner for the involuntary slight. Yet the thought would obtrude itself of how differently Mr. Stirling or Mr. Dalton would have acted under the same circumstances, and a sigh told how grieved she felt that any environment, how sad and mournful soever, should have obscured the refinement so inherent in the blood of Trevanion.

Prompt to redress the fancied injury, she placed her hand within his arm, saying, 'I think the best thing we can do is to go for a nice long walk on this lovely day, and you shall show me a little of the "field,"—you see I understand diggers now,—and your hut, where you have been living all this time by yourself, you poor lonely hermit that you were.'

"Now that's the way to behave," said Mrs. Caldwell, smiling, with motherly approval; "I see you'll know all you've got to do after a while—girls is flighty at first, Mr. Johnson."

So they walked forth along the principal (and only) street of Omeo, not wholly without observation from the miscellaneous crowd of miners, teamsters, wayfarers, tradespeople, bushmen, and others, with which a mining town where gold is abundant—and such was then the stage at which Omeo had arrived—is filled up. More than one head was turned from time to time to gaze with interest and surprise at the distinguished-looking though plainly dressed girl 'who had come up to Ballarat Harry.'

'His luck's in, my word,' was the remark of a stalwart miner, who, pick on shoulder, was following a cart with his mate, conveying their worldly possessions. 'I wonder if they're going to live in that hut of his on the ridge. She don't look as if she'd been used to cook in a slab fireplace, or lift the lid off a camp-oven.'

'Camp-oven be blowed,' rejoined his mate, who was affectionately carrying a long-handled shovel, as being too valuable an implement to be trusted in a vehicle, 'they're a-goin' to Melbourne to be spliced; and most like he'll settle there and take to gold-buying on a big scale. He's well in, is Harry, by all accounts.'