The young fellow seemed for the moment to have fallen completely under the spell of this fierce woman, whose burning eyes and passionate speech were for the moment suggestive of a disordered brain. He stared at her for a moment, and then replied—
'There ain't a lot to tell, Mrs. Trevenna; but I expect you have a right to hear it. He's no man to leave you like this, and there's more than me thinks it. He's gone to Melbourne, that's what's up. Barker, the storekeeper, told me.'
'Any one gone with him?'
'No; not as I heard on.'
'You're keeping something back, Billy Dykes. Don't try and humbug me, or I'll——In God's name, tell me everything. Was there a woman in it?'
'Well, she didn't go with him, they said, but, in a manner of speaking, it was all the same. He followed her, and a regular tip-top young lady, by all accounts.'
'Did you hear her name?'
'Miss Chalmers, or Challner; something like that. Not long from England.'
'That English girl! the cousin, of course,' she murmured, in a strange, low-toned, hesitating voice. 'So she's come out after all. You're mistook, Billy, old man; it was Lance Trevanion they seen—Mr. Trevanion, I mean—an Englishman, and very like Larry. They came out in the same ship. He was to marry this young lady, his cousin. And I know he was at Omeo.'
'That makes it all right then. You've no call to fret, Mrs. Trevenna, and I'm dashed glad of it. Only what was old Bredbo doing there? I saw him, and couldn't be mistook. No fear. I know every hair in his tail.'