“My father did. My mother died in Charleville.”
“Strange,” Blenkiron was speaking to himself, “I should not have met your father, or your mother, during the years I was in Queensland.”
“But why should you have met them? What were you doing in Australia?”
“I did all sorts of things there. I prospected for gold for some years; and for years I was working on a railway—engineering work, you understand; and then for a time I was sheep farming out there. It is, in my opinion, the one country on earth.”
“And yet you have settled in England.”
“Because my interests are all in England now. The war made such a change.”
Suddenly Preston rose.
“I must be going, Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson,” he said. “I hope you will invite me the next time you have music.”
“Indeed I shall not forget—that is, if I have your address. Shall I write it down?”
She went over to the escritoire, and he followed her.