'Permit me. I did not enjoy it; I only observed it. But there were really some nice fellows, who had just come over from Queensland—Lord Harrowsby's younger brother, and Thoresby, a Suffolk man, whose cousin I was quartered with once. They had just been investing in a sugar plantation, and were going to make a fortune in three years. One of the local men asked us all out to his place. Drove four-in-hand, too. We had a famous week of it. I never expected to enjoy it so much. Lived in a really good style.'

'Wonderful, when you come to think of it,' said the girl saucily, 'that any one should have a decent establishment in Australia! But you'll make discoveries by degrees.'

'I'm afraid you're laughing at me,' he said gravely. 'I am not of a sanguine disposition, I own. I didn't expect anything when I came here. But perhaps I shall have fewer mistakes to retract than if I had been imaginative.'

'I am not laughing at you; indeed, I think you wonderfully wise and prudent for the time you have been out. By and by you will know everything that we do ourselves. But what always entertains me about you recent importations is the mild air of surprise with which you regard the smallest evidence that the men that preceded you, and built up these great cities, this wonderful country, were of much the same birth, breeding, and social status as ourselves.'

'But many were not, surely? That must be admitted.'

'The majority were; the leaders, certainly, in every branch of civilisation: how else would the miraculous progress have been effected? The rank and file were much like other people—good, bad, and indifferent.'

Once more the old life was resumed at Corindah. Once more the succession of easy tasks and simple pleasures obtained. The walks by the river-side—the rides and drives—the history readings—the French and Italian lessons—the peaceful mornings when tranquil Nature seemed assured against change, disturbance, or decay—the dreamy afternoons—the long, quiet evenings divided between books, music, and an occasional game of whist for Mrs. Devereux's entertainment when Harold Atherstone came over. As the weeks glided on, Pollie could not believe that she had ever left Corindah, that the voyages, the travel, the strange people and incidents were unrealities, fashioned of 'such stuff as dreams are made on.'

She had resumed her quasi-friendly relations with Bertram Devereux, who apparently had not noticed the alteration of her feelings towards him. With his accustomed patience he had accepted the position, and merely set himself to overcome her doubts and maidenly scruples. In this attempt his knowledge of the subject assured him that he would ultimately succeed.

Harold Atherstone certainly came pretty frequently. He was not a man to be lightly regarded as a rival. 'What a stir he would have made in some places that I have known!' thought Devereux to himself. 'That grand seigneur air of his, the height, the stalwart frame, his Indian-chief sort of immobility, joined to his consummate skill in all accomplishments of an athletic nature. Here,' he said to himself, with a sardonic smile, 'he is thrown away. The type is more common than with us, and he has the fatal drawback, in the eyes of our prima donna, of too early, too familiar, too brotherly an intimacy. She knows him like a book. With the perverse instinct of her sex, she despises the well-read, dog's-eared volume, full of high thought and purpose, and longs for a newer work—inferior, possibly, as it may be, but with uncut pages. I shall win this game, I foresee, as I win the odd trick at our little whist tournaments—by superior science, even against better cards. Well, what then? As the husband of the handsomest woman of her year, with Corindah for her ultimate dowry, and a handsome allowance, I suppose one could live in London. Ah! would it not be life again? Not this vegetable existence, which one can stand for a year or two, but dull, dismal, à faire peur, after a while.'