While poor Mrs. Devereux thus bemoaned herself over the anomalies of life, the weeks of the short spring and early summer passed quickly along the flowery track, which, even in the Waste, is fair with wealth of leaf and blossom, with joyous birds and tempered sunshine, with high hope and joy and expectation of the coming year. The season had again been favourable. Wealth was flowing into Corindah and the neighbouring stations after the abundant fashion which, during a succession of good years, obtains in Australia Deserta. After her child was gone, Mrs. Devereux thought she would sell out and take up her abode in Europe for good. After tasting the glories and social splendours of the Old World, which she would fully appreciate, Pollie would not choose to return to Australia. Men sometimes came back to the land of spur and snaffle and wide-acred freedom, weary of cities and the artificial European life; but women, in her experience, never. They had reached across the ocean a fairy realm, where the supreme social luxuries were purchasable and abundant; servants and equipages, households and surroundings, music and the drama, art and literature, society at once congenial and aristocratic, travel and excitement—all these things were to be had for money. This they possessed. Why should they return to a land where much of this enticing catalogue did not exist, where a tithe of civilisation was difficult, the rest impossible to obtain?
So Mrs. Devereux sadly looked forward to passing the close of her days in England—a foreign land, as far as she was concerned—far from the home, the friends, the associations of her youth, her whole life indeed, up to this stage. To her the prospect was simply one of exile and endurance.
It had been arranged that the marriage was to take place in Sydney early in November. Mrs. Devereux would go thither with her daughter immediately after that important annual ceremony, the shearing at Corindah, was concluded. The good lady preferred in a general way to manage her own affairs. She signed her own cheques, which during September and October were like the sands of the sea for multitude. Mr. Gateward was economical and loyal. Still, it was always worth while to attend to one's own business, she thought. So that, although Bertram had pleaded for an earlier day, the month of November was fixed for the wedding, principally on account of the said shearing and its responsibilities—which he had come to loathe in consequence as a comparatively trifling, but none the less vexatious, obstacle.
So when the October mail-steamer arrived he was still at Corindah, and thither his letters came. He happened to be away on the day of arrival, and Pollie, emptying on the hall table the well-filled Corindah mail-bag, sorted out the different addresses to 'Bertram Devereux, Esq., Corindah, Wannonbah, New South Wales, Australia,' as was the general superscription of his European letters. Among them Pollie descried two letters in the feminine handwriting which she had before remarked. One was addressed to her lover, one to herself.
Yes, there could be no mistake. 'Miss Devereux, Corindah, Wannonbah, New South Wales, Australia.' It was doubtless from her good, motherly cousin Eleanor, in congratulation. It was very kind of her. She had had only just time to write, too. Had the marriage been in the month of October as Bertram wished, she would have been too late.
So, with smiling eyes and unsuspicious eagerness to behold the kindly, unfamiliar lines from the probable kinswoman, Pollie opened the letter. A painter would have seized the moment for a priceless portrait, had he been at hand to mark the instantaneous changes of expression—first wild surprise, then horror; the slow, expressive alteration from trusting confidence and loving hope to disappointment unspeakable, dismay, despair.
This was the fatal sheet upon which her eyes, first flashing indignant surprise, then fell:—
Wynton Hall, 9th August 188-.
I should owe you an apology, Miss Devereux, for thus addressing you, would the occasion admit of unnecessary courtesy or delay. If the lifelong happiness or misery of two women—of yourself or me—be sufficient reason for disregarding ceremony, you will hold me excused, nay, bless me in the future, whatever may be the shock to your present feelings. I have accidentally discovered, what before I only surmised, that Bertram and yourself are about to be married. He was careful not to give me a hint of his plot—for such I must consider it to be. An Australian gentleman, a Mr. Charteris, however, happened to be staying in the house where I was visiting, and mentioned that his friend Bertram Devereux was about to be married to the beautiful heiress of Corindah. He had just heard the news from a correspondent. From what I have heard of your character, I assume that you would prefer to know the truth at all hazards. You would not be willing, as are some weak women, to pardon in the man of your choice shameless falsehood, base betrayal, and broken vows.
I swear to you now, as God shall judge me at the Great Day, that Bertram Devereux is mine—mine by every vow, by every tie, which can bind man to woman. Whoso accepts him, virtually takes another woman's husband with her eyes open. As events are shaping themselves I shall be shortly free. No legal obstacle to his fulfilment of the promise which he has a hundred times made, will exist. You will wonder that I choose to hold him to his bond after his proved faithlessness. May you long be free from the forbidden knowledge which would enlighten you! That I love him still is one proof more, were it needed, of the wild inconsistency of a woman's heart. I have told him of the letter to you. I fear him not; nothing earthly has power to daunt me now.
You are free to take your own course, but you are now warned against the sacrifice of your own happiness and that of the wretched and desperate woman who calls herself—
Sybil de Wynton.
Holding the letter in her hand, the girl walked feebly and uncertainly, like one in a dream, to her own room. She saw through the open window a horseman riding across the plain towards the entrance gate. A few short moments since she would have flown to meet him. Now all was changed. It was the loveliest afternoon. The air was warm, yet free from the least excess of heat. A sighing breeze swept along the course of the now full-fed stream, and over the vast breadth of prairie, waving with profuse vegetation. But 'cloudless skies had lost their power to cheer.' A wintry blight had fallen upon the summer scene, banished its gladness, and turned the bright-hued landscape into a scene of desolation and despair.
Sweet love was dead. In the heart of the maiden was fixed an immovable sense of disaster—life-wreck, woe unutterable. So, when the word of doom is pronounced by the couch of those near and dear, all know that no hope or amendment, no recovery or reparation is possible for evermore.