THE THREE MISS KINGS

An Australian Story

BY

ADA CAMBRIDGE

AUTHOR OF MY GUARDIAN

NEW YORK

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1891

CONTENTS

THE THREE MISS KINGS.

[CHAPTER I.]

A DISTANT VIEW.

On the second of January, in the year 1880, three newly-orphaned sisters, finding themselves left to their own devices, with an income of exactly one hundred pounds a year a-piece, sat down to consult together as to the use they should make of their independence.

The place where they sat was a grassy cliff overlooking a wide bay of the Southern Ocean—a lonely spot, whence no sign of human life was visible, except in the sail of a little fishing boat far away. The low sun, that blazed at the back of their heads, and threw their shadows and the shadow of every blade of grass into relief, touched that distant sail and made it shine like bridal satin; while a certain island rock, the home of sea-birds, blushed like a rose in the same necromantic light. As they sat, they could hear the waves breaking and seething on the sands and stones beneath them, but could only see the level plain of blue and purple water stretching from the toes of their boots to the indistinct horizon. That particular Friday was a terribly hot day for the colony, as weather records testify, but in this favoured spot it had been merely a little too warm for comfort, and, the sea-breeze coming up fresher and stronger as the sun went down, it was the perfection of an Australian summer evening at the hour of which I am writing.

"What I want," said Patty King (Patty was the middle one), "is to make a dash—a straight-out plunge into the world, Elizabeth—no shilly-shallying and dawdling about, frittering our money away before we begin. Suppose we go to London—we shall have enough to cover our travelling expenses, and our income to start fair with—surely we could live anywhere on three hundred a year, in the greatest comfort—and take rooms near the British Museum?—or in South Kensington?—or suppose we go to one of those intellectual German towns, and study music and languages? What do you think, Nell? I am sure we could do it easily if we tried."

"Oh," said Eleanor, the youngest of the trio, "I don't care so long as we go somewhere, and do something."

"What do you think, Elizabeth?" pursued the enterprising Patty, alert and earnest. "Life is short, and there is so much for us to see and learn—all these years and years we have been out of it so utterly! Oh, I wonder how we have borne it! How have we borne it—to hear about things and never to know or do them, like other people! Let us get into the thick of it at once, and recover lost time. Once in Europe, everything would be to our hand—everything would be possible. What do you think?"

"My dear," said Elizabeth, with characteristic caution, "I think we are too young and ignorant to go so far afield just yet."

"We are all over twenty-one," replied Patty quickly, "and though we have lived the lives of hermits, we are not more stupid than other people. We can speak French and German, and we are quite sharp enough to know when we are being cheated. We should travel in perfect safety, finding our way as we went along. And we do know something of those places—of Melbourne we know nothing."

"We should never get to the places mother knew—the sort of life we have heard of. And Mr. Brion and Paul are with us here—they will tell us all we want to know. No, Patty, we must not be reckless. We might go to Europe by-and-bye, but for the present let Melbourne content us. It will be as much of the world as we shall want to begin with, and we ought to get some experience before we spend our money—the little capital we have to spend."

"You don't call two hundred and thirty-five pounds a little, do you?" interposed Eleanor. This was the price that a well-to-do storekeeper in the neighbouring township had offered them for the little house which had been their home since she was born, and to her it seemed a fortune.

"Well, dear, we don't quite know yet whether it is little or much, for, you see, we don't know what it costs to live as other people do. We must not be reckless, Patty—we must take care of what we have, for we have only ourselves in the wide world to depend on, and this is all our fortune. I should think no girls were ever so utterly without belongings as we are now," she added, with a little break in her gentle voice.

She was half lying on the grass, leaning on her elbow and propping her head in her hand. The light behind her was growing momentarily less fierce, and the breeze from the quiet ocean more cool and delicious; and she had taken off her hat in order to see and breathe in freedom. A noble figure she was, tall, strong, perfect in proportion, fine in texture, full of natural dignity and grace—the product of several generations of healthy and cultured people, and therefore a truly well-bred woman. Her face was a little too grave and thoughtful for her years, perhaps—she was not quite eight-and-twenty—and it was not at all handsome, in the vulgar sense of the word. But a sweeter, truer, kinder face, with its wide, firm mouth and its open brows, and its candid grey eyes, one could not wish to see. She had smooth brown hair of excessive fineness and brightness (a peculiarity of good blood shared by all the sisters), and it was closely coiled in a knot of braids at the back of her head, without any of those curls and fringes about the temples that have since become the prevailing fashion. And she was dressed in a very common, loosely-made, black print gown, with a little frill of crape at her throat, and a leather belt round her by no means slender waist. Her feet were encased in large and clumsy boots, and her shapely hands, fine-skinned and muscular, were not encased at all, but were brown with constant exposure to sun and wind, and the wear and tear of miscellaneous housework. The impetuous Patty, who sat bolt upright clasping her knees, was like her, but with marked differences. She was smaller and slighter in make, though she had the same look of abundant health and vigour. Her figure, though it had never worn stays, was more after the pattern of modern womanhood than Elizabeth's, and her brilliant little face was exquisite in outline, in colour, in all the charms of bright and wholesome youth. Patty's eyes were dark and keen, and her lips were delicate and red, and her hair had two or three ripples in it, and was the colour of a half-ripe chestnut. And altogether, she was a very striking and unmistakeably handsome girl. She, too, wore a black print gown, and a straw sailor hat, with a black ribbon, tilted back on her bead, and the same country-made boots, and the same brown and gloveless hands. Eleanor, again, with the general family qualities of physical health and refinement, had her own characteristics. She was slim and tall—as slim as Patty, and nearly as tall as Elizabeth, as was shown in her attitude as she lay full length on the grass, with her feet on the edge of the cliff, and her head on her elder sister's knee. She had a pure white skin, and sentimental blue eyes, and lovely yellow hair, just tinged with red; and her voice was low and sweet, and her manners gentle and graceful, and altogether she was one of the most pleasing young women that ever blushed unseen like a wild flower in the savage solitudes of the bush. This young person was not in black—because, she said, the weather was too hot for black. She wore an old blue gingham that had faded to a faint lavender in course of numerous washings, and she had a linen handkerchief loosely tied round her neck, and cotton gloves on her hands. She was the only one of the sisters to whom it had occurred that, having a good complexion, it was worth while to preserve it.

The parents of these three girls had been a mysterious couple, about whose circumstances and antecedents people knew just as much as they liked to conjecture, and no more. Mr. King had been on the diggings in the old days—that much was a fact, to which he had himself been known to testify; but where and what he had been before, and why he had lived like a pelican in the wilderness ever since, nobody knew, though everybody was at liberty to guess. Years and years ago, he came to this lone coast—a region of hopeless sand and scrub, which no squatter or free selector with a grain of sense would look at—and here on a bleak headland he built his rude house, piece by piece, in great part with his own hands, and fenced his little paddock, and made his little garden; and here he had lived till the other day, a morose recluse, who shunned his neighbours as they shunned him, and never was known to have either business or pleasure, or commerce of any kind with his fellow-men. It was supposed that he had made some money at the diggings, for he took up no land (there was none fit to take up, indeed, within a dozen miles of him), and he kept no stock—except a few cows and pigs for the larder; and at the same time there was never any sign of actual poverty in his little establishment, simple and humble as it was. And it was also supposed—nay, it was confidently believed—that he was not, so to speak, "all there." No man who was not "touched" would conduct himself with such preposterous eccentricity as that which had marked his long career in their midst—so the neighbours argued, not without a show of reason. But the greatest mystery in connection with Mr. King was Mrs. King. He was obviously a gentleman, in the conventional sense of the word, but she was, in every sense, the most beautiful and accomplished lady that ever was seen, according to the judgment of those who knew her—the women who had nursed her in her confinements, and washed and scrubbed for her, and the tradesmen of the town to whom she had gone in her little buggy for occasional stores, and the doctor and the parson, and the children whom she had brought up in such a wonderful manner to be copies (though, it was thought, poor ones) of herself. And yet she had borne to live all the best years of her life, at once a captive and an exile, on that desolate sea-shore—and had loved that harsh and melancholy man with the most faithful and entire devotion—and had suffered her solitude and privations, the lack of everything to which she must have been once accustomed, and the fret and trouble of her husband's bitter moods—without a murmur that anybody had ever heard.

Both of them were gone now from the cottage on the cliff where they had lived so long together. The idolised mother had been dead for several years, and the harsh, and therefore not much loved nor much mourned, father had lain but a few weeks in his grave beside her; and they had left their children, as Elizabeth described it, more utterly without belongings than ever girls were before. It was a curious position altogether. As far as they knew, they had no relations, and they had never had a friend. Not one of them had left their home for a night since Eleanor was born, and not one invited guest had slept there during the whole of that period. They had never been to school, or had any governess but their mother, or any experience of life and the ways of the world save what they gained in their association with her, and from the books that she and their father selected for them. According to all precedent, they ought to have been dull and rustic and stupid (it was supposed that they were, because they dressed themselves so badly), but they were only simple and truthful in an extraordinary degree. They had no idea what was the "correct thing" in costume or manners, and they knew little or nothing of the value of money; but they were well and widely read, and highly accomplished in all the household arts, from playing the piano to making bread and butter, and as full of spiritual and intellectual aspirations as the most advanced amongst us.

[CHAPTER II.]

A LONELY EYRIE.

"Then we will say Melbourne to begin with. Not for a permanence, but until we have gained a little more experience," said Patty, with something of regret and reluctance in her voice. By this time the sun had set and drawn off all the glow and colour from sea and shore. The island rock was an enchanted castle no longer, and the sails of the fishing-boats had ceased to shine. The girls had been discussing their schemes for a couple of hours, and had come to several conclusions.

"I think so, Patty. It would be unwise to hurry ourselves in making our choice of a home. We will go to Melbourne and look about us. Paul Brion is there. He will see after lodgings for us and put us in the way of things generally. That will be a great advantage. And then the Exhibition will be coming—it would be a pity to miss that. And we shall feel more as if we belonged to the people here than elsewhere, don't you think? They are more likely to be kind to our ignorance and help us."

"Oh, we don't want anyone to help us."

"Someone must teach us what we don't know, directly or indirectly—and we are not above being taught."

"But," insisted Patty, "there is no reason why we should be beholden to anybody. Paul Brion may look for some lodgings for us, if he likes—just a place to sleep in for a night or two—and tell us where we can find a house—that's all we shall want to ask of him or of anybody. We will have a house of our own, won't we?—so as not to be overlooked or interfered with."

"Oh, of course!" said Eleanor promptly. "A landlady on the premises is not to be thought of for a moment. Whatever we do, we don't want to be interfered with, Elizabeth."

"No, my dear—you can't desire to be free from interference—unpleasant interference—more than I do. Only I don't think we shall be able to be so independent as Patty thinks. I fancy, too, that we shall not care to be, when we begin to live in the world with other people. It will be so charming to have friends!"

"Oh—friends!" Patty exclaimed, with a little toss of the head. "It is too soon to think about friends—when we have so much else to think about! We must have some lessons in Melbourne, Elizabeth. We will go to that library every day and read. We will make our stay there a preparation for England and Germany and Italy. Oh, Nell, Nell! think of seeing the great Alps and the Doge's Palace before we die!"

"Ah!" responded Eleanor, drawing a long breath.

They all rose from the grass and stood still an instant, side by side, for a last look at the calm ocean which had been the background of their simple lives. Each was sensible that it was a solemn moment, in view of the changes to come, but not a word was spoken to imply regret. Like all the rest of us, they were ungrateful for the good things of the present and the past, and were not likely to understand how much they loved the sea, that, like the nurse of Rorie Mhor, had lulled them to sleep every night since they were born, while the sound of its many waters was still in their ears.

"Sam Dunn is out late," said Eleanor, pointing to a dark dot far away, that was a glittering sail a little while ago.

"It is a good night for fishing," said Patty.

And then they turned their faces landward, and set forth on their road home. Climbing to the top of the cliff on the slope of which they had been sitting, they stood upon a wide and desolate heath covered in all directions with a short, stiff scrub, full of wonderful wild-flowers (even at this barren season of the year), but without a tree of any sort; a picturesque desert, but still a desert, though with fertile country lying all around it—as utterly waste as the irreclaimable Sahara. Through this the girls wended their way by devious tracks amongst the bushes, ankle deep in the loose sand; and then again striking the cliff, reached a high point from which they had a distant view of human habitations—a little township, fringing a little bay; a lighthouse beyond it, with its little star shining steadily through the twilight; a little pier, running like a black thread through the silvery surf; and even a little steamer from Melbourne lying at the pier-head, veiling the rock-island, that now frowned like a fortress behind it, in a thin film of grey smoke from its invisible little funnels. But they did not go anywhere near these haunts of their fellow-men. Hugging the cliff, which was here of a great height, and honeycombed with caves in which the green sea-water rumbled and thundered like a great drum in the calm weather, and like a furious bombardment in a storm, they followed a slender track worn in the scant grass by their own light feet, until they came to a little depression in the line of the coast—a hollow scooped out of the great headland as if some Titanic monster of a prehistoric period had risen up out of the waves and bitten it—where, sheltered and hidden on three sides by grassy banks, sloping gently upward until they overtopped the chimneys, and with all the great plain of the sea outspread beneath the front verandah, stood the house which had been, but was to be no more, their home.

It was well worth the money that the storekeeper had offered for it. It was a really charming house, though people had not been accustomed to look at it in that light—though it was built of roughest weatherboard that had never known a paint-brush, and heavily roofed with great sheets of bark that were an offence to the provincial eye, accustomed to the chaste elegance of corrugated zinc. A strong, and sturdy, and genuine little house—as, indeed, it had to be to hold its own against the stormy blasts that buffeted it; mellowed and tanned with time and weather, and with all its honest, rugged features softened under a tender drapery of hardy English ivy and climbing plants that patient skill and care had induced to grow, and even to thrive in that unfriendly air. The verandah, supported on squat posts, was a continuation of the roof; and that roof, with green leaves curling upward over it, was so conspicuously solid, and so widely overspread and over-shadowed the low walls, that it was about all that could be seen of the house from the ridges of the high land around it. But lower down, the windows—nearly all set in rude but substantial door frames—opened like shy eyes in the shadow of the deep eaves of the verandah, like eyes that had expression in them; and the retiring walls bore on numerous nails and shelves a miscellaneous but orderly collection of bird-cages, flower boxes, boating and fishing apparatus, and odds and ends of various kinds, that gave a charming homely picturesqueness to the quaint aspect of the place. The comparatively spacious verandah, running along the front of the house (which had been made all front, as far as possible), was the drawing-room and general living room of the family during the greater part of the year. Its floor, of unplaned hardwood, dark with age and wear, but as exquisitely clean as sweeping and scrubbing could make it, was one of the loveliest terraces in the country for the view that it afforded—so our girls will maintain, at any rate, to their dying day. Now that they see it no more, they have passionate memories of their beloved bay, seen through a frame of rustling leaves from that lofty platform—how it looked in the dawn and sunrise, in the intensely blue noon, in the moonlight nights, and when gales and tempests were abroad, and how it sounded in the hushed darkness when they woke out of their sleep to listen to it—the rhythmic fall of breaking waves on the rocks below, the tremulous boom that filled the air and seemed to shake the foundations of the solid earth. They have no wish to get back to their early home and their hermit life there now—they have tasted a new wine that is better than the old; but, all the same, they think and say that from the lonely eyrie where they were nursed and reared they looked out upon such a scene as the wide world would never show them any more. In the foreground, immediately below the verandah, a little grass, a few sturdy shrubs, and such flowers as could keep their footing in so exposed a place, clothed the short slope of the edge of the cliff, down the steep face of which a breakneck path zig-zagged to the beach, where only a narrow strip of white sand, scarcely more than a couple of yards wide, was uncovered when the tide was out. Behind the house was a well-kept, if rather sterile, kitchen garden; and higher up the cliff, but still partly sheltered in the hollow, a very small farm-yard and one barren little paddock.

Through a back gate, by way of the farm-yard and kitchen garden, the sisters entered their domain when it was late enough to be called night, though the twilight lingered, and were welcomed with effusion by an ugly but worthy little terrier which had been bidden to keep house, and had faithfully discharged that duty during their absence. As they approached the house, a pet opossum sprang from the dairy roof to Eleanor's shoulder, and a number of tame magpies woke up with a sleepy scuffle and gathered round her. A little monkey-bear came cautiously down from the only gum tree that grew on the premises, grunting and whimpering, and crawled up Patty's skirts; and any quantity of cats and kittens appealed to Elizabeth for recognition. The girls spoke to them all by name, as if they had been so many children, cuffed them playfully for their forward manners, and ordered them to bed or to whatever avocations were proper to the hour. When a match was struck and the back-door opened, the opossum took a few flying leaps round the kitchen, had his ears boxed, and was flung back again upon the dairy roof. The little bear clung whining to his mistress, but was also put outside with a firm hand; and the cats and magpies were swept over the threshold with a broom. "Brats!" cried Patty with ferocious vehemence, as she closed the kitchen door sharply, at the risk of cutting off some of their noses; "what are we to do with them? They seem as if they knew we were going away, the aggravating little wretches. There, there"—raising the most caressing voice in answer to the whine of the monkey-bear—"don't cry, my pet! Get up your tree, darling, and have a nice supper and go to sleep."

Then, having listened for a few seconds at the closed door, she followed Elizabeth through the kitchen to the sitting-room, and, while her sister lit the lamp, stepped through the French window to sniff the salt sea air. For some time the humble members of the family were heard prowling disconsolately about the house, but none of them, except the terrier, appeared upon the verandah, where the ghost of their evil genius still sat in his old armchair with his stick by his side. They had been driven thence so often and with such memorable indignities that it would never occur to them to go there any more. And so the sisters were left in peace. Eleanor busied herself in the kitchen for awhile, setting her little batch of bread by the embers of the hearth, in view of a hot loaf for their early breakfast, while she sang some German ballads to herself with an ear for the refinements of both language and music that testified to the thoroughness of her mother's culture, and of the methods by which it had been imparted. Patty went to the dairy for a jug of milk for supper, which frugal meal was otherwise prepared by Elizabeth's hands; and at nine o'clock the trio gathered round the sitting-room table to refresh themselves with thick slices of bread and jam, and half-an-hour's gossip before they went to bed.

A pretty and pathetic picture they made as they sat round that table, with the dim light of one kerosene lamp on their strikingly fair faces—alone in the little house that was no longer theirs, and in the wide world, but so full of faith and hope in the unknown future—discussing ways and means for getting their furniture to Melbourne. That time-honoured furniture, and their immediate surroundings generally, made a poor setting for such a group—a long, low, canvas-lined room, papered with prints from the Illustrated London News (a pictorial European "history of our own times"), from the ceiling to the floor, the floor being without a carpet, and the glass doors furnished only with a red baize curtain to draw against the sea winds of winter nights. The tables and chairs were of the same order of architecture as the house; the old mahogany bureau, with its brass mounting and multitudinous internal ramifications, was ridiculously out of date and out of fashion (as fashion was understood in that part of the world); the ancient chintz sofa, though as easy as a feather bed, and of a capacity equal to the accommodation of Giant Blunderbore, was obviously home-made and not meant to be too closely criticised; and even the piano, which was a modern and beautiful instrument in itself, hid its music in a stained deal case than which no plain egg of a nightingale could be plainer. And yet this odd environment for three beautiful and cultured women had a certain dignity and harmoniousness about it—often lacking in later and more luxurious surroundings. It was in tune with those simple lives, and with the majestic solitude of the great headland and the sea.

[CHAPTER III.]

PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT.

Melbourne people, when they go to bed, chain up their doors carefully, and bar all their windows, lest the casual burglar should molest them. Bush people, no more afraid of the night than of the day, are often quite unable to tell you whether there is such a thing as an effective lock upon the premises. So our girls, in their lonely dwelling on the cliff, slept in perfect peace and security, with the wind from the sea blowing over their faces through the open door-windows at the foot of their little beds. Dan Tucker, the terrier, walked softly to and fro over their thresholds at intervals in the course of the night, and kept away any stray kitten that had not yet learned its proper place; that was all the watch and ward that he or they considered necessary.

At five o'clock in the morning, Elizabeth King, who had a little slip of a room to herself, just wide enough to allow the leaves of the French window at the end of it to be held back, when open, by buttons attached to the side walls, stirred in her sleep, stretched herself, yawned, and then springing up into a sitting posture, propped herself on her pillows to see the new day begin. It was a sight to see, indeed, from that point of view; but it was not often that any of them woke from their sound and healthy slumber at this time of the year, until the sun was high enough to shoot a level ray into their eyes. At five o'clock the surface of the great deep had not begun to shine, but it was light enough to see the black posts and eaves of the verandah, and the stems and leaves that twined about them, outlined sharply upon the dim expanse. Elizabeth's bed had no footrail, and there was no chair or dressing-table in the way to impede a clear view of sea and sky. As she lay, the line of the horizon was drawn straight across the doorway, about three feet above the edge of the verandah floor; and there a faint pink streak, with fainter flushes on a bank of clouds above it, showed where the sun was about to rise. The waves splashed heavily on the beach, and boomed in the great caves of the rocks below; the sea-gulls called to each other with their queer little cry, at once soft and shrill; and the magpies piped and chattered all around the house, and more cocks than could anyhow be accounted for crowed a mutual defiance far and near. And yet, oh, how still—how solemnly still—it was! I am not going to describe that sunrise, though I saw one exactly like it only this very morning. I have seen people take out their tubes and brushes, and sit down with placid confidence to paint sun-kissed hills, and rocks, and seas; and, if you woke them up early enough, they would "sketch" the pink and golden fire of this flaming dawn without a moment's hesitation. But I know better.

Ere the many-coloured transformation scene had melted in dazzle of daylight, Elizabeth was dressing herself by her still open window—throwing long shadows as she moved to and fro about the now sun-flooded room. Patty was busy in her dairy churning, with a number of her pets round the door, hustling each other to get at the milk dish set down for their breakfast—the magpies tugging at the cats and kittens by ears and tail, and the cats and kittens cuffing the magpies smartly. Eleanor, singing her German ballads still, was hard at work in the kitchen, baking delicate loaves for breakfast, and attending to kitchen matters generally. The elder sister's office on this occasion was to let out and feed the fowls, to sweep and dust, and to prepare the table for their morning meal. Never since they had grown out of childhood had they known the sensation of being waited upon by a servant, and as yet their system of education had been such that they did not know what the word "menial" meant. To be together with no one to interfere with them, and independent of everybody but themselves, was a habit whose origin was too remote for inquiry, and that had become a second nature and a settled theory of life—a sort of instinct of pride and modesty, moreover, though an instinct too natural to be aware of its own existence.

When the little loaves were done and the big ones put in the oven, Eleanor fetched a towel, donned a broad hat, and, passing out at the front of the house, ran lightly down the steep track on the face of the cliff to their bath-house on the beach—a little closet of rough slabs built in the rock above high water; whence she presently emerged in a scanty flannel garment, with her slender white limbs bare, and flung herself like a mermaid into the sea. There were sharks in that bay sometimes, and there were devil-fish too (Sam Dunn had spread one out, star-wise, on a big boulder close by, and it lay there still, with its horrible arms dangling from its hideous bag of a body, to be a warning to these venturesome young ladies, who, he fully expected, would be "et up" some day like little flies by a spider); but they found their safety in the perfect transparency of the water, coming in from the great pure ocean to the unsullied rocks, and kept a wary watch for danger. While Eleanor was disporting herself, Patty joined her, and after Patty, Elizabeth; and one by one they came up, glowing and dripping, like—no, I won't be tempted to make that familiar classical comparison—like nothing better than themselves for artistic purposes. As Elizabeth, who was the last to leave the water, walked up the short flight of steps to her little dressing closet, straight and stately, with her full throat and bust and her nobly shaped limbs, she was the very model that sculptors dream of and hunt for (as many more might be, if brought up as she had been), but seldom are fortunate enough to find. In her gown and leather belt, her beauty of figure, of course, was not so obvious: the raiment of civilisation, however simple, levelled it from the standard of Greek art to that of conventional comparison with other dressed-up women—by which, it must be confessed, she suffered.

Having assumed this raiment, she followed her sisters up the cliff path to the house; and there she found them talking volubly with Mrs. Dunn, who had brought them, with Sam's best respects, a freshly caught schnapper for their breakfast. Mrs. Dunn was their nearest neighbour, their only help in domestic emergencies, and of late days their devoted and confidential friend. Sam, her husband, had for some years been a ministering angel in the back yard, a purveyor of firewood and mutton, a killer of pigs, and so on; and he also had taken the orphan girls under his protection, so far as he could, since they had been "left."

"Look at this!" cried Eleanor, holding it up—it took both hands to hold it, for it weighed about a dozen pounds; "did you ever see such a fish, Elizabeth? Breakfast indeed! Yes, we'll have it to breakfast to-day and to-morrow too, and for dinner and tea and supper. Oh, how stupid Sam is! Why didn't he send it to market? Why didn't he take it down to the steamer? He's not a man of business a bit, Mrs. Dunn—he'll never make his fortune this way. Get the pan for me, Patty, and set the fat boiling. We'll fry a bit this very minute, and you shall stay and help us to eat it, Mrs. Dunn."

"Oh, my dear Miss Nelly—"

"Elizabeth, take charge of her, and don't let her go. Don't listen to her. We have not seen her for three whole days, and we want her to tell us about the furniture. Keep her safe, and Patty and I will have breakfast ready in a minute."

And in a short time the slice of schnapper was steaming on the table—a most simply appointed breakfast table, but very clean and dainty in its simplicity—and Mrs. Dunn sat down with her young protégées, and sipped her tea and gave them matronly advice, with much enjoyment of the situation.

Her advice was excellent, and amounted to this—"Don't you go for to take a stick o' that there furniture out o' the place." They were to have an auction, she said; and go to Melbourne with the proceeds in their pockets. Hawkins would be glad o' the beds, perhaps, with his large family; as Mrs. Hawkins had a lovely suite in green rep, she wouldn't look at the rest o' the things, which, though very comf'able, no doubt—very nice indeed, my dears—were not what ladies and gentlemen had in their houses now-a-days. "As for that there bureau"—pointing to it with her teaspoon—"if you set that up in a Melbourne parlour, why, you'd just have all your friends laughing at you."

The girls looked around the room with quick eyes, and then looked at each other with half-grave and half amused dismay. Patty spoke up with her usual promptness.

"It doesn't matter in the least to us what other people like to have in their houses," said she. "And that bureau, as it happens, is very valuable, Mrs. Dunn: it belonged to one of the governors before we had it, and Mr. Brion says there is no such cabinet work in these days. He says it was made in France more than a hundred years ago."

"Yes, my dear. So you might say that there was no such stuff now-a-days as what them old gowns was made of, that your poor ma wore when she was a girl. But you wouldn't go for to wear them old gowns now. I daresay the bureau was a grand piece o' furniture once, but it's out o' fashion now, and when a thing is out o' fashion it isn't worth anything. Sell it to Mr. Brion if you can; it would be a fine thing for a lawyer's office, with all them little shelves and drawers. He might give you a five-pound note for it, as he's a friend like, and you could buy a handsome new cedar chiffonnier for that."

"Mrs. Dunn," said Eleanor, rising to replenish the worthy matron's plate, with Patty's new butter and her own new bread, "we are not going to sell that bureau—no, not to anybody. It has associations, don't you understand?—and also a set of locks that no burglar could pick if he tried ever so. We are not going to sell our bureau—nor our piano—"

"Oh, but, my dear Miss Nelly—"

"My dear Mrs. Dunn, it cost ninety guineas, I do assure you, only five years ago, and it is as modern and fashionable as heart could wish."

"Fashionable! why, it might as well be a cupboard bedstead, in that there common wood. Mrs. Hawkins gave only fifty pounds for hers, and it is real walnut and carved beautiful."

"We are not going to sell that piano, my dear woman." Though Nelly appeared to wait meekly upon her elder sisters' judgment, it often happened that she decided a question that was put before them in this prompt way. "And I'll tell you for why," she continued playfully. "You shut your eyes for five minutes—wait, I'll tie my handkerchief over them"—and she deftly blindfolded the old woman, whose stout frame shook with honest giggles of enjoyment at this manifestation of Miss Nelly's fun. "Now," said Nelly, "don't laugh—don't remember that you are here with us, or that there is such a thing as a cupboard bedstead in the world. Imagine that you are floating down the Rhine on a moonlight night—no, by the way, imagine that you are in a drawing-room in Melbourne, furnished with a lovely green rep suite, and a handsome new cedar chiffonnier, and a carved walnut piano—and that a beautiful, fashionable lady, with scent on her pocket-handkerchief, is sitting at that piano. And—and listen for a minute."

Whereupon, lifting her hands from the old woman's shoulders, she crossed the room, opened the piano noiselessly, and began to play her favourite German airs—the songs of the people, that seem so much sweeter and more pathetic and poetic than the songs of any other people—mixing two or three of them together and rendering them with a touch and expression that worked like a spell of enchantment upon them all. Elizabeth sat back in her chair and lost herself in the visions that appeared to her on the ceiling. Patty spread her arms over the table and leaned towards the piano, breathing a soft accompaniment of German words in tender, sighing undertones, while her warm pulses throbbed and her eyes brightened with the unconscious passion that was stirred in her fervent soul. Even the weather-beaten old charwoman fell into a reverent attitude as of a devotee in church.

"There," said Eleanor, taking her hands from the keys and shutting up the instrument, with a suddenness that made them jump. "Now I ask you, Mrs. Dunn, as an honest and truthful woman—can you say that that is a piano to be sold?"

"Beautiful, my dear, beautiful—it's like being in heaven to hear the like o' that," the old woman responded warmly, pulling the bandage from her eyes. "But you'd draw music from an old packing case, I do believe." And it was found that Mrs. Dunn was unshaken in her conviction that pianos were valuable in proportion to their external splendour, and their tone sweet and powerful by virtue solely of the skill of the fingers that played upon them. If Mr. King had given ninety guineas for "that there"—about which she thought there must be some mistake—she could only conclude that his rural innocence had been imposed upon by wily city tradesmen.

"Well," said Nelly, who was now busy collecting the crockery on the breakfast table, "we must see if we can't furbish it up, Mrs. Dunn. We can paint a landscape on the front, perhaps, and tie some pink satin ribbons on the handles. Or we might set it behind a curtain, or in a dark corner, where it will be heard and not seen. But keep it we must—both that and the bureau. You would not part with those two things, Elizabeth?"

"My dear," said Elizabeth, "it would grieve me to part with anything."

"But I think," said Patty, "Mrs. Dunn may be right about the other furniture. What would it cost to take all our things to Melbourne, Mrs. Dunn?"

"Twice as much as they are worth, Miss Patty—three times as much. Carriage is awful, whether by sea or land."

"It is a great distance," said Patty, thoughtfully, "and it would be very awkward. We cannot take them with us, for we shall want first to find a place to put them in, and we could not come back to fetch them. I think we had better speak to Mr. Hawkins, Elizabeth, and, if he doesn't want them, have a little auction. We must keep some things, of course; but I am sure Mr. Hawkins would let them stay till we could send for them, or Mr. Brion would house them for us."

"We should feel very free that way, and it would be nice to buy new things," said Eleanor.

"Or we might not have to buy—we might put this money to the other," said Patty. "We might find that we did not like Melbourne, and then we could go to Europe at once without any trouble."

"And take the pianner to Europe along with you?" inquired Mrs. Dunn. "And that there bureau?"

[CHAPTER IV.]

DEPARTURE.

They decided to sell their furniture—with the exception of the piano and the bureau, and sundry treasures that could bestowed away in the latter capacious receptacle; and, on being made acquainted with the fact, the obliging Mr. Hawkins offered to take it as it stood for a lump sum of £50, and his offer was gratefully accepted. Sam Dunn was very wroth over this transaction, for he knew the value of the dairy and kitchen utensils and farm-yard appliances, which went to the new tenant along with the household furniture that Mrs. Dunn, as a candid friend, had disparaged and despised; and he reproached Elizabeth, tenderly, but with tears in his eyes, for having allowed herself to be "done" by not taking Mr. Brion's advice upon the matter, and shook his head over the imminent fate of these three innocent and helpless lambs about to fling themselves into the jaws of the commercial wolves of Melbourne. Elizabeth told him that she did not like to be always teasing Mr. Brion, who had already done all the legal business necessary to put them in possession of their little property, and had refused to take any fee for his trouble; that, as they had nothing more to sell, no buyer could "do" them again; and that, finally, they all thought fifty pounds a great deal of money, and were quite satisfied with their bargain. But Sam, as a practical man, continued to shake his head, and bade her remember him when she was in trouble and in need of a faithful friend—assuring her, with a few strong seafaring oaths (which did not shock her in the least, for they were meant to emphasise the sincerity of his protestations), that she and her sisters should never want, if he knew it, while he had a crust of bread and a breath in his body.

And so they began to pack up. And the fuss and confusion of that occupation—which becomes so irksome when the charm of novelty is past—was full of enjoyment for them all. It would have done the travel-worn cynic good to see them scampering about the house, as lightly as the kittens that frisked after them, carrying armfuls of house linen and other precious chattels to and fro, and prattling the while of their glorious future like so many school children about to pay a first visit to the pantomime. It was almost heartless, Mrs. Dunn thought—dropping in occasionally to see how they were getting on—considering what cause had broken up their home, and that their father had been so recently taken from them that she (Mrs. Dunn) could not bring herself to walk without hesitation into the house, still fancying she should see him sitting in his arm-chair and looking at her with those hard, unsmiling eyes, as if to ask her what business she had there. But Mr. King had been a harsh father, and this is what harsh fathers must expect of children who have never learned how to dissemble for the sake of appearances. They reverenced his memory and held it dear, but he had left them no associations that could sadden them like the sight of their mother's clothes folded away in the long unopened drawers of the wardrobe in her room—the room in which he had slept and died only a few weeks ago.

These precious garments, smelling of lavender, camphor, and sandalwood, were all taken out and looked at, and tenderly smoothed afresh, and laid in a deep drawer of the bureau. There were treasures amongst them of a value that the girls had no idea of—old gowns of faded brocade and embroidered muslin, a yellow-white Indian shawl so soft that it could be drawn through a wedding ring, yellower lace of still more wonderful texture, and fans, and scarfs, and veils, and odds and ends of ancient finery, that would have been worth considerably more than their weight in gold to a modern art collector. But these reminiscences of their mother's far-off girlhood, carefully laid in the bottom of the drawer, were of no account to them compared with the half-worn gowns of cheap stuff and cotton—still showing the print of her throat and arms—that were spread so reverently on the top of them; and compared with the numerous other memorials of her last days—her workbox, with its unfinished bit of needlework, and scissors and thimble, and tapes and cottons, just as she had left it—her Prayer-Book and Bible—her favourite cup, from which she drank her morning tea—her shabby velvet slippers, her stiff-fingered gardening gloves—all the relics that her children had cherished of the daily, homely life that they had been privileged to share with her; the bestowal of which was carried on in silence, or with tearful whispers, while all the pets were locked out of the room, as if it had been a religious function. When this drawer was closed, and they had refreshed their saddened spirits with a long walk, they set themselves with light hearts to fill the remainder of the many shelves and niches of the bureau with piles of books and music, painting materials, collections of wild flowers and shells and seaweeds, fragments of silver plate that had lain there always, as far as they knew, along with some old miniatures and daguerreotypes in rusty leather cases, and old bundles of papers that Mr. Brion had warned them to take care of—and with their own portfolios of sketches and little personal treasures of various kinds, their father's watch, and stick, and spurs, and spectacles—and so on, and so on.

After this, they had only to pack up their bed and table linen and knives and forks, which were to go with them to Melbourne, and to arrange their own scanty wardrobes to the best advantage.

"We shall certainly want some clothes," said Eleanor, surveying their united stock of available wearing apparel on Elizabeth's bedroom floor. "I propose that we appropriate—say £5—no, that might not be enough; say £10—from the furniture money to settle ourselves up each with a nice costume—dress, jacket, and bonnet complete—so that we may look like other people when we get to Melbourne."

"We'll get there first," said Patty, "and see what is worn, and the price of things. Our black prints are very nice for everyday, and we can wear our brown homespuns as soon as we get away from Mrs. Dunn. She said it was disrespectful to poor father's memory to put on anything but black when she saw you in your blue gingham, Nelly. Poor old soul! one would think we were a set of superstitious heathen pagans. I wonder where she got all those queer ideas from?"

"She knows a great deal more than we do, Patty," said wise Elizabeth, from her kneeling posture on the floor.

They packed all their clothes into two small but weighty brass-bound trunks, leaving out their blue ginghams, their well-worn water-proofs, and their black-ribboned sailor hats to travel in. Then they turned their attention to the animals, and suffered grievous trouble in their efforts to secure a comfortable provision for them after their own departure. The monkey-bear, the object of their fondest solicitude, was entrusted to Sam Dunn, who swore with picturesque energy that he would cherish it as his own child. It was put into a large cage with about a bushel of fresh gum leaves, and Sam was adjured to restore it to liberty as soon as he had induced it to grow fond of him. Then Patty and Eleanor took the long walk to the township to call on Mrs. Hawkins, in order to entreat her good offices for the rest of their pets. But Mrs. Hawkins seized the precious opportunity that they offered her for getting the detailed information, such as only women could give, concerning the interior construction and capabilities of her newly-acquired residence, and she had no attention to spare for anything else. The girls left, after sitting on two green rep chairs for nearly an hour, with the depressing knowledge that their house was to be painted inside and out, and roofed with zinc, and verandahed with green trellis-work; and that there was to be a nice road made to it, so that the family could drive to and from their place of business; and that it was to have "Sea View Villa" painted on the garden gate posts. But whether their pets were to be allowed to roam over the transformed premises (supposing they had the heart to do so) was more than they could tell. So they had an anxious consultation with Elizabeth, all the parties concerned being present, cuddled and fondled on arms and knees; and the result was a determination not to leave the precious darlings to the tender mercies of the Hawkins family. Sam Dunn was to take the opossum in a basket to some place where there were trees, a river, and other opossums, and there turn him out to unlearn his civilisation and acquire the habits and customs of his unsophisticated kinsfolk—a course of study to which your pet opossum submits himself very readily as a rule. The magpies were also to be left to shift for themselves, for they were in the habit of consorting with other magpies in a desultory manner, and they could "find" themselves in board and lodging. But the cats—O, the poor, dear, confiding old cats! O, the sweet little playful kitties!—the girls were distracted to know what to do for them. There were so many of them, and they would never be induced to leave the place—that rocky platform so barren of little birds, and those ancient buildings where no mouse had been allowed so much as to come into the world for years past. They would not be fed, of course, when their mistresses were gone. They would get into the dairy and the pantry, and steal Mrs. Hawkins's milk and meat—and it was easy to conjecture what would happen then. Mrs. Hawkins had boys moreover—rough boys who went to the State school, and looked capable of all the fiendish atrocities that young animals of their age and sex were supposed to delight in. Could they leave their beloved ones to the mercy of boys? They consulted Sam Dunn, and Sam's advice was——

Never mind. Cats and kittens disappeared. And then only Dan Tucker was left. Him, at any rate, they declared they would never part with, while he had a breath in his faithful body. He should go with them to Melbourne, bless his precious heart!—-or, if need were, to the ends of the earth.

And so, at last, all their preparations were made, and the day came when, with unexpected regrets and fears, they walked out of the old house which had been their only home into the wide world, where they were utter strangers. Sam Dunn came with his wood-cart to carry their luggage to the steamer (the conveyance they had selected, in preference to coach and railway, because it was cheaper, and they were more familiar with it); and then they shut up doors and windows, sobbing as they went from room to room; stood on the verandah in front of the sea to solemnly kiss each other, and walked quietly down to the township, hand in hand, and with the terrier at their heels, to have tea with Mr. Brion and his old housekeeper before they went on board.

[CHAPTER V.]

ROCKED IN THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP.

Late in the evening when the sea was lit up with a young moon, Mr. Brion, having given them a great deal of serious advice concerning their money and other business affairs, escorted our three girls to the little jetty where the steamer that called in once a week lay at her moorings, ready to start for Melbourne and intermediate ports at five o'clock next morning. The old lawyer was a spare, grave, gentlemanly-looking old man, and as much a gentleman as he looked, with the kindest heart in the world when you could get at it: a man who was esteemed and respected, to use the language of the local paper, by all his fellow-townsmen, whether friends or foes. They Anglicised his name in speaking it, and they wrote it "Bryan" far more often than not, though nothing enraged him more than to have his precious vowels tampered with; but they liked him so much that they never cast it up to him that he was a Frenchman.

This good old man, chivalrous as any paladin, in his shy and secret way, always anxious to hide his generous emotions, as the traditional Frenchman is anxious to display them, had done a father's part by our young orphans since their own father had left them so strangely desolate. Sam Dunn had compassed them with sweet observances, as we have seen; but Sam was powerless to unravel the web of difficulties, legal and otherwise, in which Mr. King's death had plunged them. Mr. Brion had done all this, and a great deal more that nobody knew of, to protect the girls and their interests at a critical juncture, and to give them a fair and clear start on their own account. And in the process of thus serving them he had become very much attached to them in his old-fashioned, reticent way; and he did not at all like having to let them go away alone in this lonely-looking night.

"But Paul will be there to meet you," he said, for the twentieth time, laying his hand over Elizabeth's, which rested on his arm. "You may trust to Paul—as soon as the boat is telegraphed he will come to meet you—he will see to everything that is necessary—you will have no bother at all. And, my dear, remember what I say—let the boy advise you for a little while. Let him take care of you, and imagine it is I. You may trust him as absolutely as you trust me, and he will not presume upon your confidence, believe me. He is not like the young men of the country," added Paul's father, putting a little extra stiffness into his upright figure. "No, no—he is quite different."

"I think you have instructed us so fully, dear Mr. Brion, that we shall get along very well without having to trouble Mr. Paul," interposed Patty, in her clear, quick way, speaking from a little distance.

The steamer, with her lamps lit, was all in a clatter and bustle, taking in passengers and cargo. Sam Dunn was on board, having seen the boxes stowed away safely; and he came forward to say good-bye to his young ladies before driving his cart home.

"I'll miss ye," said the brawny fisherman, with savage tenderness; "and the missus'll miss ye. Darned if we shall know the place with you gone out of it. Many's the dark night the light o' your winders has been better'n the lighthouse to show me the way home."

He pointed to the great headland lying, it seemed now, so far, far off, ghostly as a cloud. And presently he went away; and they could hear him, as he drove back along the jetty, cursing his old horse—to which he was as much attached as if it had been a human friend—with blood-curdling ferocity.

Mr. Brion stayed with them until it seemed improper to stay any longer—until all the passengers that were to come on board had housed themselves for the night, and all the baggage had been snugly stowed away—and then bade them good-bye, with less outward emotion than Sam had displayed, but with almost as keen a pang.

"God bless you, my dears," said he, with paternal solemnity. "Take care of yourselves, and let Paul do what he can for you. I will send you your money every quarter, and you must keep accounts—keep accounts strictly. And ask Paul what you want to know. Then you will get along all right, please God."

"O yes, we shall get along all right," repeated Patty, whose sturdy optimism never failed her in the most trying moments.

But when the old man was gone, and they stood on the tiny slip of deck that was available to stand on, feeling no necessity to cling to the railings as the little vessel heaved up and down in the wash of the tide that swirled amongst the piers of the jetty—when they looked at the lights of the town sprinkled round the shore and up the hillsides, at their own distant headland, unlighted, except by the white haze of the moon, at the now deserted jetty, and the apparently illimitable sea—when they realised for the first time that they were alone in this great and unknown world—even Patty's bold heart was inclined to sink a little.

"Elizabeth," she said, "we must not cry—it is absurd. What is there to cry for? Now, all the things we have been dreaming and longing for are going to happen—the story is beginning. Let us go to bed and get a good sleep before the steamer starts so that we are fresh in the morning—so that we don't lose anything. Come, Nelly, let us see if poor Dan is comfortable, and have some supper and go to bed."

They cheered themselves with the sandwiches and the gooseberry wine that Mr. Brion's housekeeper had put up for them, paid a visit to Dan, who was in charge of an amiable cook (whom the old lawyer had tipped handsomely), and then faced the dangers and difficulties of getting to bed. Descending the brass-bound staircase to the lower regions, they paused, their faces flushed up, and they looked at each other as if the scene before them was something unfit for the eyes of modest girls. They were shocked, as by some specific impropriety, at the noise and confusion, the rough jostling and the impure atmosphere, in the morsel of a ladies' cabin, from which the tiny slips of bunks prepared for them were divided only by a scanty curtain. This was their first contact with the world, so to speak, and they fled from it. To spend a night in that suffocating hole, with those loud women their fellow passengers, was a too appalling prospect. So Elizabeth went to the captain, who knew their story, and admired their faces, and was inclined to be very kind to them, and asked his permission to occupy a retired corner of the deck. On his seeming to hesitate—they being desperately anxious not to give anybody any trouble—they assured him that the place above all others where they would like to make their bed was on the wedge-shaped platform in the bows, where they would be out of everybody's way.

"But, my dear young lady, there is no railing there," said the captain, laughing at the proposal as a joke.

"A good eight inches—ten inches," said Elizabeth. "Quite enough for anybody in the roughest sea."

"For a sailor perhaps, but not for young ladies who get giddy and frightened and seasick. Supposing you tumbled off in the dark, and I found you gone when I came to look for you in the morning."

"We tumble off!" cried Eleanor. "We never tumbled off anything in our lives. We have lived on the cliffs like the goats and the gulls—nothing makes us giddy. And I don't think anything will make us seasick—or frightened either."

"Certainly not frightened," said Patty.

He let them have their way—taking a great many (as they thought) perfectly unnecessary precautions in fixing up their quarters in case of a rough sea—and himself carried out their old opossum rug and an armful of pillows to make their nest comfortable. So, in this quiet and breezy bedchamber, roofed over by the moonlit sky, they lay down with much satisfaction in each other's arms, unwatched and unmolested, as they loved to be, save by the faithful Dan Tucker, who found his way to their feet in the course of the night. And the steamer left her moorings and worked out of the bay into the open ocean, puffing and clattering, and danced up and down over the long waves, and they knew nothing about it. In the fresh air, with the familiar voice of the sea around them, they slept soundly under the opossum rug until the sun was high.

[CHAPTER VI.]

PAUL.

They slept for two nights on the tip of the steamer's nose, and they did not roll off. They had a long, delightful day at sea, no more troubled with seasickness than were the gulls to which they had compared themselves, and full of inquiring interest for each of the ports they touched at, and for all the little novelties of a first voyage. They became great friends with the captain and crew, and with some children who were amongst the passengers (the ladies of the party were indisposed to fraternise with them, not being able to reconcile themselves to the cut and quality of the faded blue gingham gowns, or to those eccentric sleeping arrangements, both of which seemed to point to impecuniosity—which is so closely allied to impropriety, as everybody knows). They sat down to their meals in the little cabin with wonderful appetites; they walked the deck in the fine salt wind with feet that were light and firm, and hearts that were high and hopeful and full of courage and enterprise. Altogether, they felt that the story was beginning pleasantly, and they were eager to turn over the pages.

And then, on the brightest of bright summer mornings, they came to Melbourne.

They did not quite know what they had expected to see, but what they did see astonished them. The wild things caught in the bush, and carried in cages to the Eastern market, could not have felt more surprised or dismayed by the novelty of the situation than did these intrepid damsels when they found themselves fairly launched into the world they were so anxious to know. For a few minutes after their arrival they stood together silent, breathless, taking it all in; and then Patty—yes, it was Patty—exclaimed:

"Oh, where is Paul Brion?"

Paul Brion was there, and the words had no sooner escaped her lips than he appeared before them. "How do you do, Miss King?" he said, not holding out his hand, but taking off his hat with one of his father's formal salutations, including them all. "I hope you have had a pleasant passage. If you will kindly tell me what luggage you have, I will take you to your cab; it is waiting for you just here. Three boxes? All right. I will see after them."

He was a small, slight, wiry little man, with decidedly brusque, though perfectly polite manners; active and self-possessed, and, in a certain way of his own, dignified, notwithstanding his low stature. He was not handsome, but he had a keen and clever face—rather fierce as to the eyes and mouth, which latter was adorned with a fierce little moustache curling up at the corners—but pleasant to look at, and one that inspired trust.

"He is not a bit like his father," said Patty, following him with Eleanor, as he led Elizabeth to the cab. Patty was angry with him for overhearing that "Where is Paul Brion?"—as she was convinced he had done—and her tone was disparaging.

"As the mother duck said of the ugly duckling, if he is not pretty he has a good disposition," said Eleanor. "He is like his father in that. It was very kind of him to come and help us. A press man must always be terribly busy."

"I don't see why we couldn't have managed for ourselves. It is nothing but to call a cab," said Patty with irritation.

"And where could we have gone to?" asked her sister, reproachfully.

"For the matter of that, where are we going now? We haven't the least idea. I think it was very stupid to leave ourselves in the hands of a chance young man whom we have hardly ever seen. We make ourselves look like a set of helpless infants—as if we couldn't do without him."

"Well, we can't," said Eleanor.

"Nonsense. We don't try. But," added Patty, after a pause, "we must begin to try—we must begin at once."

They arrived at the cab, in which Elizabeth had seated herself, with the bewildered Dan in her arms, her sweet, open face all smiles and sunshine. Paul Brion held the door open, and, as the younger sisters passed him, looked at them intently with searching eyes. This was a fresh offence to Patty, at whom he certainly looked most. Impressions new and strange were crowding upon her brain this morning thick and fast. "Elizabeth," she said, unconscious that her brilliant little countenance, with that flush of excitement upon it, was enough to fascinate the gaze of the dullest man; "Elizabeth, he looks at us as if we were curiosities—he thinks we are dowdy and countryfied and it amuses him."

"My dear," interposed Eleanor, who, like Elizabeth, was (as she herself expressed it) reeking with contentment, "you could not have seen his face if you think that. He was as grave as a judge."

"Then he pities us, Nelly, and that is worse. He thinks we are queer outlandish creatures—frights. So we are. Look at those women on the other side of the street, how differently they are dressed! We ought not to have come in these old clothes, Elizabeth."

"But, my darling, we are travelling, and anything does to travel in. We will put on our black frocks when we get home, and we will buy ourselves some new ones. Don't trouble about such a trifle now, Patty—it is not like you. Oh, see what a perfect day it is! And think of our being in Melbourne at last! I am trying to realise it, but it almost stuns me. What a place it is! But Mr. Paul says our lodgings are in a quiet, airy street—not in this noisy part. Ah, here he is! And there are the three boxes all safe. Thank you so much," she said warmly, looking at the young man of the world, who was some five years older than herself, with frankest friendliness, as a benevolent grandmamma might have looked at an obliging schoolboy. "You are very good—we are very grateful to you."

"And very sorry to have given you so much trouble," added Patty, with the air of a young duchess.

He looked at her quickly, and made a slight bow. He did not say that what he had done had been no trouble at all, but a pleasure—he did not say a word, indeed; and his silence made her little heart swell with mortification. He turned to Elizabeth, and, resting his hands on the door-frame, began to explain the nature of the arrangements that he had made for them, with business-like brevity.

"Your lodgings are in Myrtle Street, Miss King. That is in East Melbourne, you know—quite close to the gardens—quite quiet and retired, and yet within a short walk of Collins Street, and handy for all the places you want to see. You have two bedrooms and a small sitting-room of your own, but take your meals with the other people of the house; you won't mind that, I hope—it made a difference of about thirty shillings a week, and it is the most usual arrangement. Of course you can alter anything you don't like when you get there. The landlady is a Scotchwoman—I know her very well, and can recommend her highly—I think you will like her."

"But won't you come with us?" interposed Elizabeth, putting out her hand. "Come and introduce us to her, and see that the cabman takes us to the right place. Or perhaps you are too busy to spare the time?"

"I—I will call on you this afternoon, if you will permit me—when you have had your lunch and are rested a little. Oh, I know the cabman quite well, and can answer for his taking you safely. This is your address"—hastily scribbling it on an envelope he drew from his pocket—"and the landlady is Mrs. M'Intyre. Good morning. I will do myself the pleasure of calling on you at four or five o'clock."

He thereupon bowed and departed, and the cab rattled away in an opposite direction. Patty deeply resented his not coming with them, and wondered and wondered why he had refused. Was he too proud, or too shy, or too busy, or too indifferent? Did he feel that it was a trouble to him to have to look after them? Poor Paul! He would have liked to come, to see them comfortably housed and settled; but the simple difficulty was that he was afraid to risk giving them offence by paying the cab fare, and would not ride with them, a man in charge of three ladies, without paying it. And Patty was not educated to the point of appreciating that scruple. His desertion of them in the open street was a grievance to her. She could not help thinking of it, though there was so much else to think of.

The cab turned into Collins Street and rattled merrily up that busy thoroughfare in the bright sunshine. They looked at the brilliant shop windows, at the gay crowd streaming up and down the pavements, and the fine equipages flashing along the road-way at the Town Hall, and the churches, and the statues of Burke and Wills—and were filled with admiration and wonder. Then they turned into quieter roads, and there was the Exhibition in its web of airy scaffolding, destined to be the theatre of great events, in which they would have their share—an inspiring sight. And they went round a few corners, catching refreshing glimpses of green trees and shady alleys, and presently arrived at Myrtle Street—quietest of suburban thoroughfares, with its rows of trim little houses, half-a-dozen in a block, each with its tiny patch of garden in front of it—where for the present they were to dwell.

Mrs. M'Intyre's maid came out to take the parcels, and the landlady herself appeared on the doorstep to welcome the new-comers. They whispered to themselves hurriedly, "Oh, she has a nice face!"—and then Patty and Elizabeth addressed themselves to the responsible business of settling with the cabman.

"How much have we to pay you?" asked Patty with dignity.

"Twelve shillings, please, miss," the man gaily replied.

Elizabeth looked at her energetic sister, who had boasted that they were quite sharp enough to know when they were being cheated. Upon which Patty, with her feathers up, appealed to the landlady. Mrs. M'Intyre said the proper sum due to him was just half what he had asked. The cabman said that was for one passenger, and not for three. Mrs. M'Intyre then represented that eighteen-pence apiece was as much as he could claim for the remaining two, that the luggage was a mere nothing, and that if he didn't mind what he was about, &c. So the sum was reduced to nine shillings, which Elizabeth paid, looking very grave over it, for it was still far beyond what she had reckoned on.

Then they went into the house—the middle house of a smart little terrace, with a few ragged fern trees in the front garden—and Mrs. M'Intyre took them up to their rooms, and showed them drawers and cupboards, in a motherly and hospitable manner.

"This is the large bedroom, with the two beds, and the small one opens off it; so that you will all be close together," said she, displaying the neat chambers, one of which was properly but a dressing-closet; and our girls, who knew no luxury but absolute cleanliness, took note of the whiteness of the floors and bedclothes, and were more than satisfied. "And this is your sitting-room," she proceeded, leading the way to an adjoining apartment pleasantly lighted by a French window, which opened upon a stone (or, rather, what looked like a stone) balcony. It had a little "suite" in green rep like Mrs. Hawkins's, and Mrs. Dunn's ideal cedar-wood chiffonnier; it had also a comfortable solid table with a crimson cloth, and a print of the ubiquitous Cenci over the mantelpiece. The carpet was a bed of blooming roses and lilies, the effect of which was much improved by the crumb cloth that was nailed all over it. It was a tiny room, but it had a cosy look, and the new lodgers agreed at once that it was all that could be desired. "And I hope you will be comfortable," concluded the amiable landlady, "and let me know whenever you want anything. There's a bathroom down that passage, and this is your bell, and those drawers have got keys, you see, and lunch will be ready in half-an-hour. The dining-room is the first door at the bottom of the stairs, and—phew! that tobacco smoke hangs about the place still, in spite of all my cleaning and airing. I never allow smoking in the house, Miss King—not in the general way; but a man who has to be up o' nights writing for the newspapers, and never getting his proper sleep, it's hard to grudge him the comfort of his pipe—now isn't it? And I have had no ladies here to be annoyed by it—in general I don't take ladies, for gentlemen are so much the most comfortable to do for; and Mr. Brion is so considerate, and gives so little trouble—"

"What! Is Mr. Paul Brion lodging here?" broke in Patty impetuously, with her face aflame.

"Not now," Mrs. M'Intyre replied. "He left me last week. These rooms that you have got were his—he has had them for over three years. He wanted you to come here, because he thought you would be comfortable with me"—smiling benignly. "He said a man could put up anywhere."

She left them, presently; and as soon as the girls found themselves alone, they hurriedly assured each other that nothing should induce them to submit to this. It was not to be thought of for a moment. Paul Brion must be made to remove the mountainous obligation that he had put them under, and return to his rooms instantly. They would not put so much as a pocket handkerchief in the drawers and cupboards until this point had been settled with him.

At four o'clock, when they had visited the bathroom, arranged their pretty hair afresh, and put on the black print gowns—when they had had a quiet lunch with Mrs. M'Intyre (whose other boarders being gentlemen in business, did not appear at the mid-day meal), prattling cheerfully with the landlady the while, and thinking that the cold beef and salads of Melbourne were the most delicious viands ever tasted—when they had examined their rooms minutely, and tried the sofas and easy-chairs, and stood for a long while on the balcony looking at the other houses in the quiet street—at four o'clock Paul Brion came; and the maid brought up his card, while he gossiped with Mrs. M'Intyre in the hall. He had no sooner entered the girls' sitting-room than Elizabeth hastened to unburden herself. Patty was burning to be the spokeswoman for the occasion, but she knew her place, and she remembered the small effect she had produced on him in the morning, and proudly held aloof. In her sweet and graceful way, but with as much gravity and earnestness as if it were a matter of life and death, Elizabeth explained her view of the situation. "Of course we cannot consent to such an arrangement," she said gently; "you must have known we could never consent to allow you to turn out of your own rooms to accommodate us. You must please come back again, Mr. Brion, and let us go elsewhere. There seem to be plenty of other lodgings to be had—even in this street."

Paul Brion's face wore a pleasant smile as he listened. "Oh, thank you," he replied lightly. "But I am very comfortable where I am—quite as much so as I was here—rather more, indeed. For the people at No. 6 have set up a piano on the other side of that wall"—pointing to the cedar chiffonnier—"and it bothered me dreadfully when I wanted to write. It was the piano drove me out—not you. Perhaps it will drive you out too. It is a horrible nuisance, for it is always out of tune; and you know the sort of playing that people indulge in who use pianos that are out of tune."

So their little demonstration collapsed. Paul had gone away to please himself. "And has left us to endure the agonies of a piano out of tune," commented Patty.

As the day wore on, reaction from the mood of excitement and exaltation with which it began set in. Their spirits flagged. They felt tired and desolate in this new world. The unaccustomed hot dinner in the evening, at which they sat for nearly an hour in company with strange men who asked them questions, and pressed them to eat what they didn't want, was very uncongenial to them. And when, as soon as they could, they escaped to their own quarters, their little sitting-room, lighted with gas and full of hot upstairs air, struck them with its unsympathetic and unhomelike aspect. The next door piano was jingling its music-hall ditties faintly on the other side of the wall, and poor Dan, who had been banished to the back yard, was yelping so piteously that their hearts bled to hear him. "We must get a house of our own at once, Elizabeth—at once," exclaimed Eleanor—"if only for Dan's sake."

"We will never have pets again—never!" said Patty, with something like an incipient sob in her voice, as she paced restlessly about the room. "Then we shall not have to ill-treat them and to part from them." She was thinking of her little bear, and the opossum, and the magpies, who were worse off than Dan.

And Elizabeth sat down at the table, and took out pencil and note-book with a careworn face. She was going to keep accounts strictly, as Mr. Brion had advised her, and they not only meant to live within their income, as a matter of course, but to save a large part of it for future European contingencies. And, totting up the items of their expenditure for three days—cost of passage by steamer, cost of provisions on board, cab fare, and the sum paid for a week's board and lodging in advance—she found that they had been living for that period at the rate of about a thousand a year.

So that, upon the whole, they were not quite so happy as they had expected to be, when they went to bed.

[CHAPTER VII.]

A MORNING WALK.

But they slept well in their strange beds, and by morning all their little troubles had disappeared. It was impossible not to suppose that the pets "at home" were making themselves happy, seeing how the sun shone and the sea breezes blew; and Dan, who had reached years of discretion, was evidently disposed to submit himself to circumstances. Having a good view of the back yard, they could see him lolling luxuriously on the warm asphalte, as if he had been accustomed to be chained up, and liked it. Concerning their most pressing anxiety—the rapid manner in which money seemed to melt away, leaving so little to show for it—it was pointed out that at least half the sum expended was for a special purpose, and chargeable to the reserve fund and not to their regular income, from which at present only five pounds had been taken, which was to provide all their living for a week to come.

So they went downstairs in serene and hopeful spirits, and gladdened the eyes of the gentlemen boarders who were standing about the dining-room, devouring the morning's papers while they waited for breakfast. There were three of them, and each placed a chair promptly, and each offered handsomely to resign his newspaper. Elizabeth took an Argus to see what advertisements there were of houses to let; and then Mrs. M'Intyre came in with her coffee-pot and her cheerful face, and they sat down to breakfast. Mrs. M'Intyre was that rare exception to the rule, a boarding-house keeper who had private means as well as the liberal disposition of which the poorest have their share, and so her breakfast was a good breakfast. And the presence of strangers at table was not so unpleasant to our girls on this occasion as the last.

After breakfast they had a solemn consultation, the result being that the forenoon was dedicated to the important business of buying their clothes and finding their way to and from the shops.

"For we must have bonnets," said Patty, "and that immediately. Bonnets, I perceive, are the essential tokens of respectability. And we must never ride in a cab again."

They set off at ten o'clock, escorted by Mrs. M'Intyre, who chanced to be going to the city to do some marketing. The landlady, being a very fat woman, to whom time was precious, took the omnibus, according to custom; but her companions with one consent refused to squander unnecessary threepences by accompanying her in that vehicle. They had a straight road before them all the way from the corner of Myrtle Street to the Fishmarket, where she had business; and there they joined her when she had completed her purchases, and she gave them a fair start at the foot of Collins Street before she left them.

In Collins Street they spent the morning—a bewildering, exciting, anxious morning—going from shop to shop, and everywhere finding that the sum they had brought to spend was utterly inadequate for the purpose to which they had dedicated it. They saw any quantity of pretty soft stuffs, that were admirably adapted alike to their taste and means, but to get them fashioned into gowns seemed to treble their price at once; and, as Patty represented, they must have one, at any rate, that was made in the mode before they could feel it safe to manufacture for themselves. They ended by choosing—as a measure of comparative safety, for thus only could they know what they were doing, as Patty said—three ready-made costumes that took their fancy, the combined cost of which was a few shillings over the ten pounds. They were merely morning dresses of black woollen stuff; lady-like, and with a captivating style of "the world" about them, but in the lowest class of goods of that kind dispensed in those magnificent shops. Of course that was the end of their purchases for the day; the selection of mantles, bonnets, gloves, boots, and all the other little odds and ends on Elizabeth's list was reserved for a future occasion. For the idea of buying anything on twenty-four hours' credit was never entertained for a moment. To be sure, they did ask about the bonnets, and were shown a great number, in spite of their polite anxiety not to give unprofitable trouble; and not one that they liked was less than several pounds in price. Dismayed and disheartened, they "left it" (Patty's suggestion again); and they gave the rest of their morning to the dressmaker, who undertook to remodel the bodices of the new gowns and make them fit properly. This fitting was not altogether a satisfactory business, either; for the dressmaker insisted that a well-shaped corset was indispensable—especially in these days, when fit was everything—and they had no corsets and did not wish for any. She was, however, a dressmaker of decision and resource, and she sent her assistant for a bundle of corsets, in which she encased her helpless victims before she would begin the ripping and snipping and pulling and pinning process. When they saw their figures in the glass, with their fashionable tight skirts and unwrinkled waists, they did not know themselves; and I am afraid that Patty and Eleanor, at any rate, were disposed to regard corsets favourably and to make light of the discomfort they were sensibly conscious of in wearing them. Elizabeth, whose natural shape was so beautiful—albeit she is destined, if the truth must be told, to be immensely stout and heavy some day—was not seduced by this specious appearance. She ordered the dressmaker, with a quiet peremptoriness that would have become a carriage customer, to make the waists of the three gowns "free" and to leave the turnings on; and she took off the borrowed corset, and drew a long breath, inwardly determining never to wear such a thing again, even to have a dress fitted—fashion or no fashion.

It was half-past twelve by this time, and at one o'clock Mrs. M'Intyre would expect them in to lunch. They wanted to go home by way of those green enclosures that Paul Brion had told them of, and of which they had had a glimpse yesterday—which the landlady had assured them was the easiest thing possible. They had but to walk right up to the top of Collins Street, turn to the right, where they would see a gate leading into gardens, pass straight through those gardens, cross a road and go straight through other gardens, which would bring them within a few steps of Myrtle Street—a way so plain that they couldn't miss it if they tried. Ways always do seem so to people who know them. Our three girls were self-reliant young women, and kept their wits about them very creditably amid their novel and distracting surroundings. Nevertheless they were at some loss with respect to this obvious route. Because, in the first place, they didn't know which was the top of Collins Street and which the bottom.

"Dear me! we shall be reduced to the ignominious necessity of asking our way," exclaimed Eleanor, as they stood forlornly on the pavement, jostled by the human tide that flowed up and down. "If only we had Paul Brion here."

It was very provoking to Patty, but he was there. Being a small man, he did not come into view till he was within a couple of yards of them, and that was just in time to overhear this invocation. His ordinarily fierce aspect, which she had disrespectfully likened to that of Dan when another terrier had insulted him, had for the moment disappeared. The little man showed all over him the pleased surprise with which he had caught the sound of his own name.

"Have you got so far already?" he exclaimed, speaking in his sharp and rapid way, while his little moustache bristled with such a smile as they had not thought him capable of. "And—and can I assist you in any way?"

Elizabeth explained their dilemma; upon which he declared he was himself going to East Melbourne (whence he had just come, after his morning sleep and noontide breakfast), and asked leave to escort them thither. "How fortunate we are!" Elizabeth said, turning to walk up the street by his side; and Eleanor told him he was like his father in the opportuneness of his friendly services. But Patty was silent, and raged inwardly.

When they had traversed the length of the street, and were come to the open space before the Government offices, where they could fall again into one group, she made an effort to get rid of him and the burden of obligation that he was heaping upon them.

"Mr. Brion," she began impetuously, "we know where we are now quite well—"

"I don't think you do," he interrupted her, "seeing that you were never here before."

"Our landlady gave us directions—she made it quite plain to us. There is no necessity for you to trouble yourself any further. You were not going this way when we met you, but exactly in the opposite direction."

"I am going this way now, at any rate," he said, with decision. "I am going to show your sisters their way through the gardens. There are a good many paths, and they don't all lead to Myrtle Street."

"But we know the points of the compass—we have our general directions," she insisted angrily, as she followed him helplessly through the gates. "We are not quite idiots, though we do come from the country."

"Patty," interposed Elizabeth, surprised, "I am glad of Mr. Brion's kind help, if you are not."

"Patty," echoed Eleanor in an undertone, "that haughty spirit of yours will have a fall some day."

Patty felt that it was having a fall now. "I know it is very kind of Mr. Brion," she said tremulously, "but how are we to get on and do for ourselves if we are treated like children—I mean if we allow ourselves to hang on to other people? We should make our own way, as others have to do. I don't suppose you had anyone to lead you about when you first came to Melbourne"—addressing Paul.

"I was a man," he replied. "It is a man's business to take care of himself."

"Of course. And equally it is a woman's business to take care of herself—if she has no man in her family."

"Pardon me. In that case it is the business of all the men with whom she comes in contact to take care of her—each as he can."

"Oh, what nonsense! You talk as if we lived in the time of the Troubadours—as if you didn't know that all that stuff about women has had its day and been laughed out of existence long ago."

"What stuff?"

"That we are helpless imbeciles—a sort of angelic wax baby, good for nothing but to look pretty. As if we were not made of the same substance as you, with brains and hands—not so strong as yours, perhaps, but quite strong enough to rely upon when necessary. Oh!" exclaimed Patty, with a fierce gesture, "I do so hate that man's cant about women—I have no patience with it!"

"You must have been severely tried," murmured Paul (he was beginning to think the middle Miss King a disagreeable person, and to feel vindictive towards her). And Eleanor laughed cruelly, and said, "Oh, no, she's got it all out of books."

"A great mistake to go by books," said he, with the air of a father. "Experience first—books afterwards, Miss Patty." And he smiled coolly into the girl's flaming face.

[CHAPTER VIII.]

AN INTRODUCTION TO MRS. GRUNDY.

Patty and her sisters very nearly had their first quarrel over Paul Brion. Patty said he was impertinent and patronising, that he presumed upon their friendless position to pay them insulting attentions—that, in short, he was a detestable young man whom she, for one, would have nothing more to do with. And she warned Elizabeth, in an hysterical, high-pitched voice, never to invite him into their house unless she wished to see her (Patty) walk out of it. Elizabeth, supported by Eleanor, took up the cudgels in his defence, and assured Patty, kindly, but with much firmness, that he had behaved with dignity and courtesy under great provocation to do otherwise. They also pointed out that he was his father's representative; that it would be ungracious and unladylike to reject the little services that it was certainly a pleasure to him to render, and unworthy of them to assume an independence that at present they were unable to support. Which was coming as near to "words" as was possible for them to come, and much nearer than any of them desired. Patty burst into tears at last, which was the signal for everything in the shape of discord and division to vanish. Her sisters kissed and fondled her, and assured her that they sympathised with her anxiety to be under obligations to nobody from the bottom of their hearts; and Patty owned that she had been captious and unreasonable, and consented to forgive her enemy for what he hadn't done and to be civil to him in future.

And, as the days wore on, even she grew to be thankful for Paul Brion, though, of course, she would never own to it. Their troubles were many and various, and their helpless ignorance more profound and humiliating than they could have believed possible. I will not weary the reader by tracing the details of the process by which they became acquainted with the mode and cost of living "as other people do," and with the ways of the world in general; it would be too long a story. How Patty discovered that the cleverest fingers cannot copy a London bonnet without some previous knowledge of the science of millinery; how she and her sisters, after supplying themselves grudgingly with the mere necessaries of a modern outfit, found that the remainder of their "furniture money," to the last pound note, was spent; how, after weary trampings to and fro in search of a habitable house in a wholesome neighbourhood, they learned the ruinous rates of rent and taxes and (after much shopping and many consultations with Mrs. M'Intyre) the alarming prices of furniture and provisions; how they were driven to admit, in spite of Patty, that that landlady on the premises, whom Eleanor had declared was not to be thought of, might be a necessary safeguard against worse evils; and how they were brought to ask each other, in surprise and dismay, "Is it possible that we are poor people after all, and not rich, as we supposed?"—all these things can be better imagined than described. Suffice it to say, they passed through much tribulation and many bitter and humbling experiences during the early months of their sojourn in Melbourne; but when at last they reached a comparatively safe haven, and found themselves once more secure under their own control, able to regulate their needs and their expenditure, and generally to understand the conditions and possibilities of their position, Elizabeth and Eleanor made a solemn declaration that they were indebted for this happy issue to the good offices and faithful friendship of Paul Brion alone, and Patty—though she turned up her nose and said "Pooh!"—though she hated to be indebted to him, or to anybody—agreed with them.

They settled down to their housekeeping by very slow degrees. For some time they stayed with Mrs. M'Intyre, because there really seemed nothing else to do that was at all within their means; and from this base of operations they made all those expeditions of inquiry into city habits and customs, commercial and domestic, which were such conspicuous and ignominious failures. As the sense of their helplessness grew upon them, they grudgingly admitted the young man (who was always at hand, and yet never intruded upon or pestered them) to their counsels, and accepted, without seeming to accept, his advice; and the more they condescended in this way the better they got on. Gradually they fell into the habit of depending on him, by tacit consent—which was the more easy to do because, as his father had promised, he did not presume upon their confidence in him. He was sharp and brusque, and even inclined to domineer—to be impertinent, as Patty called it—when they did submit their affairs to his judgment; but not the smallest suspicion of an unauthorised motive for his evident devotion to their interests appeared in his face, or voice, or manner, which were those of the man of business, slightly suggesting occasionally the imperious and impartial "nearest male relative." They grew to trust him—for his father's sake, they said, but there was nothing vicarious about it; and that they had the rare fortune to be justified in doing so, under such unlikely circumstances, made up to them for whatever ill luck they might otherwise have seemed to encounter in these days. It was he who finally found them their home, after their many futile searches—half a house in their own street and terrace, vacated by the marriage and departure to another colony of the lady who played the piano that was out of tune. No. 6, it appeared, had been divided into flats; the ground floor was occupied by the proprietor, his wife, and servant; and the upper, which had a gas stove and other kitchen appliances in a back room, was let unfurnished for £60 a year. Paul, always poking about in quest of opportunities, heard of this one and pounced upon it. He made immediate inquiries into the character and antecedents of the landlord of No. 6, the state of the drains and chimneys, and paint and paper, of the house; and, having satisfied himself that it was as nearly being what our girls wanted as anything they would be likely to find, called upon Elizabeth, and advised her to secure it forthwith. The sisters were just then adding up their accounts—taking stock of their affairs generally—and coming to desperate resolutions that something must be done; so the suggested arrangement, which would deliver them from bondage and from many of their worst difficulties, had quite a providential opportuneness about it. They took the rooms at once—four small rooms, including the improvised kitchen—and went into them, in defiance of Mrs. M'Intyre's protestations, before they had so much as a bedstead to sleep upon; and once more they were happy in the consciousness that they had recovered possession of themselves, and could call their souls their own. Slowly, bit by bit, the furniture came in—the barest necessaries first, and then odds and ends of comfort and prettiness (not a few of them discovered by Paul Brion in out-of-the-way places, where he "happened" to be), until the new little home grew to look as homelike as the old one. They sent for the bureau and the piano, which went a long way towards furnishing the sitting-room; and they bought a comfortable second-hand table and some capacious, cheap, wickerwork chairs; and they laid a square of matting on the floor, and made some chintz curtains for the window, and turned a deal packing-case into an ottoman, and another into a set of shelves for their books; and over all these little arrangements threw such an air of taste, such a complexion of spotless cleanliness and fastidious neatness, as are only seen in the homes of "nice" women, that it takes nice people to understand the charm of.

One day, when their preparations for regular domestic life were fairly completed, Patty, tired after a long spell of amateur carpentering, sat down to the piano to rest and refresh herself. The piano had been tuned on its arrival in Melbourne; and the man who tuned it had stared at her when she told him that it had been made to her mother's order, and showed him the famous name above the key-board. He would have stared still more had he heard what kind of magic life she could summon into the exquisite mechanism boxed up in that poor-looking deal case. All the sisters were musicians, strange to say; taught by their mother in the noble and simple spirit of the German school, and inheriting from her the sensitive ear and heart to understand the dignity and mystery, if not the message (which nobody understands) of that wonderful language which begins where words leave off. To "play the piano" was no mere conventional drawing-room performance with them, as they themselves were no conventional drawing-room misses; a "piece" of the ordinary pattern would have shocked their sense of art and harmony almost as much as it might have shocked Mozart and Mendelssohn, and Schubert and Schumann, and the other great masters whose pupils they were; while to talk and laugh, either when playing or listening, would have been to them like talking and laughing over their prayers. But, of the three, Patty was the most truly musical, in the serious meaning of the word, inasmuch as her temperament was warmer than those of her sisters, her imagination more vivid, her senses generally more susceptible to delicate impressions than theirs. The "spirits of the air" had all their supernatural power over her receptive and responsive soul, and she thrilled like an Æolian harp to the west wind under the spell of those emotions that have no name or shape, and for which no imagery supplies a comparison, which belong to the ideal world, into which those magic spirits summon us, and where the sacred hours of our lives—the sweetest, the saddest, the happiest—are spent.

To-day she sat down, suddenly prompted by the feeling that she was fagged and tired, and began to play mechanically a favourite Beethoven sonata; but in five minutes she had played her nerves to rest, and was as steeped in dreams as the great master himself must have been when he conceived the tender passages that only his spiritual ears could hear. Eleanor, who had been sewing industriously, by degrees let her fingers falter and her work fall into her lap; and Elizabeth, who had been arranging the books in the new book-shelves, presently put down her duster to come and stand behind the music-stool, and laid her large, cool hands on Patty's head. None of them spoke for some time, reverencing the Presence in their quiet room; but the touch of her sister's palms upon her hair brought the young musician out of her abstractions to a sense of her immediate surroundings again. She laid her head back on Elizabeth's breast and drew a long sigh, and left off playing. The gesture said, as plainly as words could have said it, that she was relieved and revived—that the spirit of peace and charity had descended upon her.

"Elizabeth," she said presently, still keeping her seat on the music-stool, and stroking her cheek with one of her sister's hands while she held the other round her neck, "I begin to think that Paul Brion has been a very good friend to us. Don't you?"

"I am not beginning," replied Elizabeth. "I have thought it every day since we have known him. And I have wondered often how you could dislike him so much."

"I don't dislike him," said Patty, quite amiably.

"I have taken particular notice," remarked Eleanor from the hearthrug, "and it is exactly three weeks since you spoke to him, and three weeks and five days since you shook hands."

Patty smiled, not changing her position or ceasing to caress her cheek with Elizabeth's hand. "Well," she said, "don't you think it would be a graceful thing to ask him to come and have tea with us some night? We have made our room pretty"—looking round with contentment—"and we have all we want now. We might get our silver things out of the bureau, and make a couple of little dishes, and put some candles about, and buy a bunch of flowers—for once—what do you say, Nelly? He has never been here since we came in—never farther than the downstairs passage—and wouldn't it be pleasant to have a little house warming, and show him our things, and give him some music, and—and try to make him enjoy himself? It would be some return for what he has done for us, and his father would be pleased."

That she should make the proposition—she who, from the first, had not only never "got on" with him, but had seemed to regard him with active dislike—surprised both her sisters not a little; but the proposition itself appeared to them, as to her, to have every good reason to recommend it. They thought it a most happy idea, and adopted it with enthusiasm. That very evening they made their plans. They designed the simple decorations for their little room, and the appropriate dishes for their modest feast. And, when these details had been settled, they remembered that on the following night no Parliament would be sitting, which meant that Paul would probably come home early (they knew his times of coming and going, for he was back at his old quarters now, having returned in consequence of the departure of the discordant piano, and to oblige Mrs. M'Intyre, he said); and that decided them to send him his invitation at once. Patty, while her complaisant mood was on her, wrote it herself before she went to bed, and gave it over the garden railing to Mrs. M'Intyre's maid.

In the morning, as they were asking which of them should go to town to fetch certain materials for their little fête, they heard the door bang and the gate rattle at No. 7, and a quick step that they knew. And the slavey of No. 6 came upstairs with Paul Brion's answer, which he had left as he passed on his way to his office. The note was addressed to "Miss King," whose amanuensis Patty had carefully explained herself to be when writing her invitation.

"MY DEAR MISS KING,—You are indeed very kind, but I fear I must deny myself the pleasure you propose—than which, I assure you, I could have none greater. If you will allow me, I will come in some day with Mrs. M'Intyre, who is very anxious to see your new menage. And when I come, I hope you will let me hear that new piano, which is such an amazing contrast to the old one.—Believe me, yours very truly,

"PAUL BRION."

This was Paul Brion's note. When the girls had read it, they stood still and looked at each other in a long, dead silence. Eleanor was the first to speak. Half laughing, but with her delicate face dyed in blushes, she whispered under her breath, "Oh—oh, don't you see what he means?"

"He is quite right—we must thank him," said Elizabeth, gentle as ever, but grave and proud. "We ought not to have wanted it—that is all I am sorry for."

But Patty stood in the middle of the room, white to the lips, and beside herself with passion. "That we should have made such a mistake!—and for him to rebuke us!" she cried, as if it were more than she could bear. "That I should have been the one to write that letter! Elizabeth, I suppose he is not to blame—"

"No, my dear—quite the contrary."

"But, all the same, I will never forgive him," said poor Patty in the bitterness of her soul.

[CHAPTER IX.]

MRS. AARONS.

There was no room for doubt as to what Paul Brion had meant. When the evening of the next day came—on which there was no Parliament sitting—he returned to No. 7 to dinner, and after dinner it was apparent that neither professional nor other engagements would have prevented him from enjoying the society of his fair neighbours if he had had a mind for it. His sitting-room opened upon the balcony—so did theirs; there was but a thin partition between them, and the girls knew not only when he was at home, but to a great extent what he was doing, by the presence and pungency of the odour from his pipe. When only faint whiffs stole into their open window from time to time, he was in his room, engaged—it was supposed—upon those wonderful leading articles which were, to them, the great feature of the paper to whose staff he belonged. At such times—for the houses in Myrtle Street were of a very lath-and-plastery order—they were careful to make no noise, and especially not to open their piano, that he might pursue his arduous labours undisturbed. But sometimes on these "off" nights he sat outside his window or strolled up and down the few feet of space allotted to him; and they would hear the rustle of the leaves of books on the other side of the partition, and the smell of his pipe would be very strong. This indicated that he had come home to rest and relax himself; on which occasions, prompted by some subtle feminine impulse, they would now and then indulge themselves with some of their best music—tacitly agreeing to select the very finest movements from the works of those best-beloved old masters whose majestic chimes rang out the dark evening of the eighteenth century and rang in the new age of art and liberty whose morning light we see—so as not to suggest, except by extreme comparison, the departed lady who played conventional rubbish on the instrument that was out of tune. That Paul Brion did not know Bach and Spohr, even by name and fame (as he did not), never for a moment occurred to them. How were they to know that the science and literature of music, in which they had been so well instructed, were not the usual study of educated people? They heard that he ceased to walk up and down his enclosure when they began to play and sing, and they smelt that his pipe was as near their window as it could get until they left off. That was enough.

To-night, then, he was strolling and sitting about his section of the balcony. They heard him tramping to and fro for a full hour after dinner, in a fidgetty manner; and then they heard him drag a chair through his window, and sit down on it heavily. It occurred to them all that he was doing nothing—except, perhaps, waiting for a chance to see and speak to them. A little intercourse had taken place of late in this way—a very little. One night, when Elizabeth had gone out to remonstrate with Dan for barking at inoffensive dogs that went by in the street below, Paul, who had been leaning meditatively on his balustrade, bent his head a little forward to ask her if she found the smell of his tobacco unpleasant. She assured him that none of them minded it at all, and remarked that the weather was warm. Upon which he replied that the thermometer was so and so, and suggested that she must miss the sea breezes very much. She said they missed them very much indeed, and inquired if he had heard from his father lately, and whether he was well. He was glad to inform her that his father, from whom he had just heard, was in excellent health, and further, that he had made many inquiries after her and her sisters. She thanked Mr. Brion sincerely, and hoped he (Mr. Paul) would give him their kindest regards when he wrote again and tell him they were getting on admirably. Mr. Paul said he would certainly not forget it. And they bade each other a polite good-night. Since then, both Elizabeth and Eleanor had had a word to say to him occasionally, when he and they simultaneously took the air after the day was over, and simultaneously happened to lean over the balustrade. Patty saw no harm in their doing so, but was very careful not to do it herself or to let him suppose that she was conscious of his near neighbourhood. She played to him sometimes with singular pleasure in her performance, but did not once put herself in the way of seeing or speaking to him.

To-night, not only she, but all of them, made a stern though unspoken vow that they would never—that they could never—so much as say good-night to him on the balcony any more. The lesson that he had taught them was sinking deeply into their hearts; they would never forget it again while they lived. They sat at their needlework in the bright gaslight, with the window open and the venetian blind down, and listened to the sound of his footstep and the dragging of his chair, and clearly realised the certainty that it was not because he was too busy that he had refused to spend the evening with them, but because he had felt obliged to show them that they had asked him to do a thing that was improper. Patty's head was bent down over her sewing; her face was flushed, her eyes restless, her quick fingers moving with nervous vehemence. Breaking her needle suddenly, she looked up and exclaimed, "Why are we sitting here so dull and stupid, all silent, like three scolded children? Play something, Nellie. Put away that horrid skirt, and play something bright and stirring—a good rousing march, or something of that sort."

"The Bridal March from 'Lohengrin,'" suggested Elizabeth, softly.

"No," said Patty; "something that will brace us up, and not make us feel small and humble and sat upon." What she meant was "something that will make Paul Brion understand that we don't feel small and humble and sat upon."

Eleanor rose, and laid her long fingers on the keyboard. She was not in the habit of taking things much to heart herself, and she did not quite understand her sister's frame of mind. The spirit of mischief prompted her to choose the saddest thing in the way of a march that she could recall on the spur of the moment—that funeral march of Beethoven's that Patty had always said was capable of reducing her to dust and ashes in her most exuberant moments. She threw the most heartbreaking expression that art allowed into the stately solemnity of her always perfectly balanced execution, partly because she could never render such a theme otherwise than reverently, but chiefly for the playful purpose of working upon Patty's feelings. Poor Patty had "kept up" and maintained a superficial command of herself until now, but this unexpected touch of pathos broke her down completely. She laid her arm on the table, and her pretty head upon her arm, and broke into a brief but passionate fit of weeping, such as she had never indulged in in all her life before. At the sound of the first sob Eleanor jumped up from the music-stool, contrite and frightened—Elizabeth in another moment had her darling in her arms; and both sisters were seized with the fear that Patty was sickening for some illness, caught, probably, in the vitiated atmosphere of city streets, to which she had never been accustomed.

In the stillness of the night, Paul Brion, leaning over the balustrade of the verandah, and whitening his coat against the partition that divided his portion of it from theirs, heard the opening bars of the funeral march, the gradually swelling sound and thrill of its impassioned harmonies, as of a procession tramping towards him along the street, and the sudden lapse into untimely silence. And then he heard, very faintly, a low cry and a few hurried sobs, and it was as if a lash had struck him. He felt sure that it was Patty who had been playing (he thought it must always be Patty who made that beautiful music), and Patty who had fallen a victim to the spirit of melancholy that she had invoked—simply because she always did seem to him to represent the action of the little drama of the sisters' lives, and Elizabeth and Eleanor to be the chorus merely; and he had a clear conviction, in the midst of much vague surmise, that he was involved in the causes that had made her unhappy. For a little while he stood still, fixing his eyes upon a neighbouring street lamp and scowling frightfully. He heard the girls' open window go down with a sharp rattle, and presently heard it open again hastily to admit Dan, who had been left outside. Then he himself went back, on tiptoe, to his own apartment, with an expression of more than his usual alert determination on his face.

Entering his room, he looked at his watch, shut his window and bolted it, walked into the adjoining bedchamber, and there, with the gas flaring noisily so as to give him as much light as possible, made a rapid toilet, exchanging his loose tweeds for evening dress. In less than ten minutes he was down in the hall, with his latch key in his pocket, shaking himself hurriedly into a light overcoat; and in less than half an hour he was standing at the door of a good-sized and rather imposing-looking house in the neighbouring suburb, banging it in his peremptory fashion with a particularly loud knocker.

Within this house its mistress was receiving, and she was a friend of his, as might have been seen by the manner of their greeting when the servant announced him, as also by the expression of certain faces amongst the guests when they heard his name—as they could not well help hearing it. "Mr.—Paul—BRION," the footman shouted, with three distinct and well-accentuated shouts, as if his lady were entertaining in the Town Hall. It gave Mrs. Aarons great pleasure when her domestic, who was a late acquisition, exercised his functions in this impressive manner.

She came sailing across the room in a very long-tailed and brilliant gown—a tall, fair, yellow-haired woman, carefully got up in the best style of conventional art (as a lady who had her clothes from Paris regardless of expense was bound to be)—flirting her fan coquettishly, and smiling an unmistakeable welcome. She was not young, but she looked young, and she was not pretty, but she was full of sprightly confidence and self-possession, which answered just as well. Least of all was she clever, as the two or three of her circle, who were, unwillingly recognised; but she was quick-witted and vivacious, accomplished in the art of small talk, and ready to lay down the law upon any subject, and somehow cleverness was assumed by herself and her world in general to be her most remarkable and distinguishing characteristic. And, finally, she had no pretensions to hereditary distinction—very much the contrary, indeed; but her husband was rich (he was standing in a retired corner, a long-nosed man with dark eyes rather close together, amongst a group of her admirers, admiring her as much as any of them), and she had known the social equivalent for money obtainable by good management in a community that must necessarily make a table of precedence for itself; and she had obtained it. She was a woman of fashion in her sphere, and her friends were polite enough to have no recollection of her antecedents, and no knowledge of the family connections whose existence she found it expedient to ignore. It must be said of her that her reputation, subject to the usual attacks of scandal-loving gossips who were jealous of her success, was perfectly untarnished; she was too cold and self-contained to be subject to the dangers that might have beset a less worldly woman in her position (for that Mr. Aarons was anything more than the minister to her ambitions and conveniences nobody for a moment supposed). Nevertheless, to have a little court of male admirers always hanging about her was the chief pleasure, and the attracting and retaining of their admiration the most absorbing pursuit of her life. Paul Brion was the latest, and at present the most interesting, of her victims. He had a good position in the press world, and had recently been talked of "in society" in connection with a particularly striking paper signed "P. B.," which had appeared in the literary columns of his journal. Wherefore, in the character of a clever woman, Mrs. Aarons had sought him out and added him to the attractions of her salon and the number of sympathetic friends. And, in spite of his hawk eyes, and his keen discernment generally, our young man had the ordinary man's belief that he stood on a pedestal among his rivals, and thought her the kindest and most discriminating and most charming of women.

At least he had thought so until this moment. Suddenly, as she came across the room to meet him, with her long train rustling over the carpet in a queenly manner, and a gracious welcome in her pale blue eyes, he found himself looking at her critically—comparing her complacent demeanour with the simple dignity of Elizabeth King, and her artificial elegance with the wild-flower grace of Eleanor, who was also tall and fair—and her studied sprightliness with Patty's inspired vigour—and her countenance, that was wont to be so attractive, with Patty's beautiful and intellectual face.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Aarons, shaking hands with him impressively, "you have remembered my existence, then, at last! Do you know how many weeks it is since you honoured me with your company?—five. And I wonder you can stand there and look me in the face."

He said it had been his misfortune and not his fault—that he had been so immersed in business that he had had no time to indulge in pleasure.

"Don't tell me. You don't have business on Friday evenings," said Mrs. Aarons promptly.

"Oh, don't I?" retorted Mr. Brion (the fact being that he had spent several Friday evenings on his balcony, smoking and listening to his neighbours' music, in the most absolute and voluptuous idleness). "You ladies don't know what a press-man's life is—his nose to the grindstone at all hours of the night and day."

"Poor man! Well, now you are here, come and sit down and tell me what you have been doing."

She took a quick glance round the room, saw that her guests were in a fair way to support the general intercourse by voluntary contributions, set the piano and a thin-voiced young lady and some "Claribel" ditties going, and then retired with Paul to a corner sofa for a chat. She was inclined to make much of him after his long absence, and he was in a mood to be more effusive than his wont. Nevertheless, the young man did not advance, as suspicious observers supposed him to be doing, in the good graces of his charming friend—ready as she was to meet him half-way.

"Of course I wanted very much to see you—it seems an awful time since I was here—but I had another reason for coming to-night," said Paul, when they had comfortably settled themselves (he was the descendant of countless gentlefolk and she had not even a father that she could conveniently call her own, yet was she constrained to blush for his bad manners and his brutal deficiency in delicacy and tact). "I want to ask a favour of you—you are always so kind and good—and I think you will not mind doing it. It is not much—at least to you—but it would be very much to them—"

"To whom?" inquired Mrs. Aarons, with a little chill of disappointment and disapproval already in her voice and face. This was not what she felt she had a right to expect under the present combination of circumstances.

"Three girls—three sisters, who are orphans—in a kind of way, wards of my father's," explained Paul, showing a disposition to stammer for the first time. "Their name is King, and they have come to live in Melbourne, where they don't know anyone—not a single friend. I thought, perhaps, you would just call in and see them some day—it would be so awfully kind of you, if you would. A little notice from a woman like you would be just everything to them."

"Are they nice?—that is to say, are they the sort of people whom one would—a—care to be responsible for—you know what I mean? Are they ladies?" inquired Mrs. Aarons, who, by virtue of her own extraction, was bound to be select and exclusive in her choice of acquaintances.

"Most certainly," replied Paul, with imprudent warmth. "There can be no manner of doubt about that. Born ladies."

"I don't ask what they were born," she said quickly, with a toss of the head. "What are they now? Who are their connections? What do they live on?"

Paul Brion gave a succinct and graphic sketch of the superficial history and circumstances of his father's "wards," omitting various details that instinct warned him might be accounted "low"—such, for instance, as the fact that the single maidservant of the house they lived in was nothing more to them than their medium of communication with the front door. He dwelt (like the straightforward blunderer that he was) on their personal refinement and their high culture and accomplishments, how they studied every day at the Public Library, taking their frugal lunch at the pastry-cook's—how they could talk French and German like "natives"—how they played the piano in a way that made all the blood in one's veins tingle—how, in short, they were in all things certain to do honour and credit to whoever would spread the wing of the matron and chaperon over them. It seemed to him a very interesting story, told by himself, and he was quite convinced that it must touch the tender woman's heart beating under that pretty dress beside him.

"You are a mother yourself," he said (as indeed she was—the mother of four disappointing little Aaronses, who were all long-nosed and narrow-eyed and dark, each successive infant more the image of its father than the last), "and so you can understand their position—you know how to feel for them." He thought this an irresistible plea, and was unprepared for the dead silence with which it was received. Glancing up quickly, he saw that she was by no means in the melting mood that he had looked for.

"Of course, if you don't wish it—if it will be troubling you too much—" he began, with his old fierce abruptness, drawing himself together.

"It is not that," said she, looking at her fan. "But now I know why you have stayed away for five weeks."

"Why I have stayed away—oh! I understand. But I told you they were living alone, did I not? Therefore I have never been into their house—it is quite impossible for me to have the pleasure of their society."

"Then you want me to take them up, so that you can have it here? Is that it?"

The little man was looking so ferocious, and his departure from her side appeared so imminent, that she changed her tone quickly after putting this question. "Never mind," she said, laying her jewelled fingers on his coat sleeve for a moment, "I will not be jealous—at least I will try not to be. I will go and call on them to-morrow, and as soon as they have called on me I will ask them to one of my Fridays. Will that do?"

"I don't wish you for a moment to do what would be at all unpleasant to yourself," he said, still in a hurt, blunt tone, but visibly softening.

"It won't be unpleasant to me," she said sentimentally, "if it will please you."

And Paul went home at midnight, well satisfied with what he had done, believing that a woman so "awfully kind" as Mrs. Aarons would be a shield and buckler to those defenceless girls.

[CHAPTER X.]

THE FIRST INVITATION.

Mrs. Aarons kept her promise, and called upon the Kings on Saturday. Mrs. M'Intyre saw her get down at the gate of No. 6, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, watched the brougham which had brought her trundling slowly up and down the street for half-an-hour, and then saw her get into it and drive off; which facts, communicated to Paul Brion, gave him the greatest satisfaction.

He did not see his neighbours for several days after. He heard their piano, and their footsteps and voices on the verandah; but, whenever he essayed to go outside his own room for a breath of fresh air, they were sure to retire into theirs immediately, like mice into a hole when the cat has frightened them. At last he came across them in an alley of the Fitzroy Gardens, as he and they were converging upon Myrtle Street from different points. They were all together as usual—the majestic Elizabeth in the middle, with her younger sisters on either side of her; and they were walking home from an organ recital in the Town Hall to their tea, and a cosy evening over a new book, having spent most of the morning at the Public Library, and had their mid-day dinner at Gunsler's. As he caught sight of them, he was struck by the change in their outward appearance that a few weeks of Melbourne experience had brought about, and pleased himself with thinking how much their distinguished aspect must have impressed that discerning woman of the world, who had so kindly condescended to take them up. They were dressed in their new gowns, and bonneted, booted, and gloved, in the neatest manner; a little air of the mode pervaded them now, while the primitive purity of their taste was still unadulterated. They had never looked more charming, more obviously "born ladies" than to-day, as he saw them after so long an interval.

The three black figures stood the shock of the unexpected meeting with admirable fortitude. They came on towards him with no faltering of that free and graceful gait that was so noticeable in a city full of starched and whale-boned women, and, as he lifted his hat, bowed gravely—Elizabeth only giving him a dignified smile, and wishing him a good evening as she went by. He let them pass him, as they seemed to wish to pass him; then he turned sharply and followed them. It was a chance he might not get again for months, perhaps, and he could not afford to let it slip.

"Miss King," he called in his imperative brusque way; and at the sound of his voice Elizabeth looked back and waited for him to join her, while her younger sisters, at a sign from Patty, walked on at a brisk pace, leaving her in command of the situation. "Miss King," said Paul earnestly, "I am so glad to have an opportunity of speaking to you—I have been wanting all the week to see you, that I might thank you for your kindness in asking me to tea."

"Oh," said Elizabeth, whose face was scarlet, "don't mention it, Mr. Brion. We thought of it merely as a—a little attention—a sort of acknowledgment—to your father; that it might please him, perhaps, for you to see that we had settled ourselves, as he could not do so himself."

"It would have pleased me, beyond everything in the world, Miss King. Only—only—"

"Yes, I know. We forgot that it was not quite de rigueur—or, rather, we had not learned about those things. We have been so out of the world, you see. We were dreadfully ashamed of ourselves," she added candidly, with a little embarrassed laugh, "but you must set it down to our ignorance of the laws of propriety, and not suppose that we consciously disregarded them."

"The laws of propriety!" repeated Paul hotly, his own face red and fierce. "It is Schiller, I think, who says that it is the experience of corruption which originated them. I hate to hear you speak of impropriety, as if you could even conceive the idea of it!"

"Well, we are not in Arcadia now, and we must behave ourselves accordingly," said Elizabeth, who was beginning to feel glad in her gentle heart that she had been able to make this explanation. "I think we are getting corrupted with wonderful rapidity. We have even been called upon, quite as if we were people of fashion and consequence, by a lady who was dressed in the most magnificent manner, and who came in her carriage. Her name was Aarons—Mrs. Aarons. She said she had heard of of our being here, and thought she would like to make our acquaintance."

"Did she?" responded Paul warmly, thinking how nice and delicate it was of Mrs. Aarons to respect his anxious wish that his name and interposition should not be mentioned, which was certainly more than he had expected of her. "And were you all at home when she called?"

"As it happened—yes. It was on Saturday afternoon, when we are generally rather busy."

"And have you returned her call yet?"

"No. We don't mean to return it," said Elizabeth composedly; "we did not like her enough to wish to make an acquaintance of her. It is no good to put ourselves out, and waste our own time and theirs, for people whom we are sure not to care about, and who would not care about us, is it?"

"But I think you would like her if you knew her, Miss King," pleaded Paul, much disturbed by this threatened downfall of his schemes. "I am sure—at least, I have always heard, and I can speak a little from personal knowledge—that she is a particularly nice woman; thoroughly kind and amiable, and, at the same time, having a good position in society, and a remarkably pleasant house, where you might meet interesting people whom you would like. Oh, don't condemn her at first sight in that way! First impressions are so seldom to be trusted. Go and call, at any rate—indeed, you know, you ought to do that, if only for form's sake."

"For politeness, do you mean? Would it be rude not to return her call?"

"It would be thought so, of course."

"Ah, I was not sure—I will call then. I don't mind calling in the least. If she has done us a kindness, it is right to acknowledge it in whatever is the proper way. It was my sisters—especially Patty—who took a dislike to her, and particularly wished not to see her again. Patty thought she asked too many questions, and that she came from some motive of curiosity to pry into our affairs. She was certainly a little impertinent, I thought. But then, perhaps, ladies in 'the world' don't look at these things as we have been accustomed to do," added Elizabeth humbly.

"I don't think they do," said Paul.

By this time they had reached the gate through which Patty and Eleanor had passed before them out of the gardens. As they silently emerged into the road, they saw the pair flitting along the pavement a considerable distance ahead of them, and when they turned the corner into Myrtle Street both the slender black figures had disappeared. Paul wondered to see himself so irritated by this trifling and inevitable circumstance. He felt that it would have done him good to speak to Patty, if it were only to quarrel with her.

Elizabeth bade him good-night when she reached the gate of No. 6, where the hall door stood open—putting her warm, strong hand with motherly benevolence into his.

"Good-night, Miss King. I am so glad to have seen you," he responded, glaring fiercely at the balcony and the blank window overhead. "And—and you will return that call, won't you?"

"O yes—of course. We will walk there on Monday, as we come home from the Library. We are able to find our way about in Melbourne very well now, with the help of the map you were so kind as to give us when we first came. I can't tell you how useful that has been."

So, with mutual friendship and goodwill, they parted—Elizabeth to join her sisters upstairs, where one was already setting the tea-kettle to boil on the gas stove, and the other spreading a snow-white cloth on the sitting-room table—Paul Brion to get half-an-hour's work and a hasty dinner before repairing to the reporters' gallery of "the House."

He did not see them again for a long time, and the first news he heard of them was from Mrs. Aarons, whom he chanced to meet when she was shopping one fine morning in Collins Street.

"You see, I remembered my promise," she said, when matters of more personal moment had been disposed of; "I went to see those extraordinary protégées of yours."

"Extraordinary—how extraordinary?" he inquired stiffly.

"Well, I put it to you—are they not extraordinary?"

He was silent for a few seconds, and the points of his moustache went up a little. "Perhaps so—now you mention it," he said. "Perhaps they are unlike the—the usual girl of the period with whom we are familiar. But I hope you were favourably impressed with your visit. Were you?"

"No, I wasn't. I will be frank with you—I wasn't. I never expected to find people living in that manner—and dressing in that manner. It is not what I am used to."

"But they are very lady-like—if I am any judge—and that is the chief thing. Very pretty too. Don't you think so?"

"O dear no! The middle one has rather nice eyes perhaps—though she gives herself great airs, I think, considering her position. And the youngest is not bad looking. Miss King is plain, decidedly. However, I told you I would do something for them, and I have kept my word. They are coming to my next Friday. And I do hope," proceeded Mrs. Aarons, with an anxious face, "that they will dress themselves respectably for the reputation of my house. Do you know anyone who could speak to them about it? Could you give them a hint, do you think?"

"I!—good gracious! I should like to see myself at it," said Paul, grimly. "But I don't think," he added, with a fatuity really pitiable in a man of his years and experience, "that there is any danger of their not looking nice. They must have had their old frocks on when you saw them."

[CHAPTER XI.]

DISAPPOINTMENT.

How they should dress themselves for Mrs. Aarons's Friday was a question as full of interest for our girls as if they had been brought up in the lap of wealth and fashion. They were not so ignorant of the habits and customs of "the world" as not to know that evening dress was required of them on this occasion, and they had not seen so many shop windows and showrooms without learning something of its general features as applied to their sex and to the period. Great were the discussions that went on over the momentous subject. Even their studies at the Public Library lost their interest and importance, it is to be feared, for a day or two, while they were anxiously hesitating, first, whether they should accept the invitation, and, secondly, in what costume they should make their first appearance in polite society. The former of these questions was settled without much trouble. Elizabeth's yearning for "friends," the chance of discovering whom might be missed by missing this unusual opportunity; Patty's thirst for knowledge and experience in all available fields, and Eleanor's habit of peaceably falling in with her sisters' views, overcame the repugnance that all of them entertained to the idea of being patronised by, or beholden for attentions that they could not reciprocate to, Mrs. Aarons, against whom they had conceived a prejudice on the first day of contact with her which a further acquaintance had not tended to lessen. But the latter question was, as I have said, a matter of much debate. Could they afford themselves new frocks?—say, black grenadines that would do for the summer afterwards. This suggestion was inquired into at several shops and of several dressmakers, and then relinquished, but not without a struggle. "We are just recovering ourselves," said Elizabeth, with her note-book before her and her pencil in her hand; "and if we go on as we are doing now we shall be able to save enough to take us to Europe next year without meddling with our house-money. But if we break our rules—well, it will throw us back. And it will be a bad precedent, Patty."

"Then we won't break them," said Patty valiantly. "We will go in our black frocks. Perhaps," she added, with some hesitation, "we can find something amongst our mother's things to trim us up a little."

"She would like to see us making ourselves look pretty with her things," said Eleanor.

"Yes, Nelly. That is what I think. Come along and let us look at that bundle of lace that we put in the bottom drawer of the bureau. Elizabeth, does lace so fine as that go with woollen frocks, do you think? We must not have any incongruities if we can help it."

Elizabeth thought that plain white ruffles would, perhaps, be best, as there was so much danger of incongruities if they trusted to their untrained invention. Whereupon Patty pointed out that they would have to buy ruffles, while the lace would cost nothing, which consideration, added to their secret wish for a little special decoration, now that the occasion for it had arisen—the love of adornment being, though refined and chastened, an ingredient of their nature as of every other woman's—carried the day in favour of "mother's things."

"And I think," said Patty, with dignity, when at last Friday came and they had spread the selected finery on their little beds, "I think that ladies ought to know how to dress themselves better than shop-people can tell them. When they want to make themselves smart, they should think, first, what they can afford and what will be suitable to their position and the occasion, and then they should think what would look pretty in a picture. And they should put on that."

Patty, I think, was well aware that she would look pretty in a picture, when she had arrayed herself for the evening. Round the neck of her black frock she had loosely knotted a length of fine, yellow-white Brussels lace, the value of which, enhanced by several darns that were almost as invisibly woven as the texture itself, neither she nor her sisters had any idea of. Of course it did not "go" with the black frock, even though the latter was not what mourning was expected to be, but its delicacy was wonderfully thrown up by its contrast with that background, and it was a most becoming setting for the wearer's brilliant face. Patty had more of the priceless flounce sewn on her black sleeves (the little Vandal had cut it into lengths on purpose), half of it tucked in at the wrists out of sight; and the ends that hung over her breast were loosely fastened down with a quaint old silver brooch, in which a few little bits of topaz sparkled. Elizabeth was not quite so magnificent. She wore a fichu of black lace over her shoulders—old Spanish, that happened just then to be the desire and despair of women of fashion, who could not get it for love or money; it was big enough to be called a shawl, and in putting it on Patty had to fold and tack it here and there with her needle, to keep it well up in its proper place. This was fastened down at the waist with a shawl-pin shaped like a gold arrow, that her grandmother had used to pin her Paisley over her chest; and, as the eldest daughter, Elizabeth wore her mother's slender watch-chain wound round and round her neck, and, depending from it, an ancient locket of old red gold, containing on its outward face a miniature of that beautiful mother as a girl, with a beading of little pearls all round it. Eleanor was dressed up in frills of soft, thick Valenciennes, taken from the bodice of one of the brocaded gowns; which lace, not being too fragile to handle, Elizabeth, ignorant as yet of the artistic excellence of the genuine coffee-colour of age, had contrived to wash to a respectable whiteness. And to Eleanor was given, from the little stock of family trinkets, a string of pearls, fastened with an emerald clasp—pearls the size of small peas, and dingy and yellow from never having been laid out on the grass, as, according to a high authority, pearls should be. Upon the whole, their finery, turned into money, would probably have bought up three of the most magnificent costumes worn in Melbourne that night; yet it can scarcely be said to have been effective. Neither Mrs. Aarons nor her lady friends had the requisite experience to detect its quality and understand what we may call its moral value. Only one person amongst the company discovered that Eleanor's pearls were real, and perhaps only that one had been educated in lace, save rudimentally, in the Melbourne shops. And amongst the nouveaux riches, as poor gentlefolks well know, to have no claims to distinction but such as are out of date is practically to have none.

Late in the evening, Paul Brion, who had not intended to go to this particular Friday, lest his presence should betray to the sisters what he was so anxious to conceal from them, found that he could not resist the temptation to see with his own eyes how they were getting on; and when he had entered the room, which was unusually crowded, and had prowled about for a few minutes amongst the unpleasantly tall men who obstructed his view in all directions, he was surprised and enraged to see the three girls sitting side by side in a corner, looking neglected and lonely, and to see insolent women in long-tailed satin gowns sweeping past them as if they had not been there. One glance was enough to satisfy him that there had been no fear of their not looking "nice." Patty's bright and flushed but (just now) severe little face, rising so proudly from the soft lace about her throat and bosom, seemed to him to stand out clear in a surrounding mist, apart and distinct from all the faces in the room—or in the world, for that matter. Elizabeth's dignified serenity in an uncomfortable position was the perfection of good breeding, and made a telling contrast to the effusive manners of those about her; and fair Eleanor, sitting so modestly at Elizabeth's side, with her hands, in a pair of white silk mittens, folded in her lap, was as charming to look at as heart of man could desire. Other men seemed to be of his opinion, for he saw several hovering around them and looking at them with undisguised interest; but the ladies, who, he thought, ought to have felt privileged to take them up, appeared to regard them coldly, or to turn their backs upon them altogether, literally as well as metaphorically. It was plain that Mrs. Aarons had introduced them to nobody, probably wishing (as was indeed the case—people of her class being morbidly sensitive to the disgrace of unfashionable connections) not to own to them more than she could help.

He withdrew from their neighbourhood before they saw him, and went to seek his hostess, swelling with remonstrant wrath. He found her on a sofa at the other end of the room, talking volubly (she was always voluble, but now she was breathless in her volubility) to a lady who had never before honoured her Fridays, and who, by doing so to-night, had gratified an ambition that had long been paramount amongst the many ambitions which, enclosed in a narrow circle as they were, served to make the interest and occupation of Mrs. Aarons's life. She looked up at Paul as he approached her, and gave him a quick nod and smile, as if to say, "I see you, but you must be perfectly aware that I am unable to attend to you just now." Paul understood her, and, not having the honour of Mrs. Duff-Scott's acquaintance himself, fell back a little behind the sofa and waited for his opportunity. As he waited, he could not help overhearing the conversation of the two ladies, and deriving a little cynical amusement therefrom.

"And, as soon as I heard of it, I begged my husband to go and see if it was really a genuine example of Derby-Chelsea; and, you see, it was," said Mrs. Aarons, with subdued enthusiasm—almost with tears of emotion.

"It was, indeed," assented Mrs. Duff-Scott earnestly. "There was the true mark—the capital D, with the anchor in the middle of it. It is extremely rare, and I had no hope of ever possessing a specimen."

"I knew you would like to have it. I said to Ben. 'Do go and snatch it up at once for Mrs. Duff-Scott's collection.' And he was so pleased to find he was in time. We were so afraid someone might have been before us. But the fact is, people are so ignorant that they have no idea of the value of things of that sort—fortunately."

"I don't call it fortunate at all," the other lady retorted, a little brusquely. "I don't like to see people ignorant—I am quite ready to share and share." Then she added, with a smile, "I am sure I can never be sufficiently obliged to Mr. Aarons for taking so much trouble on my account. I must get him into a corner presently, and find out how much I am in his debt—though, of course, no money can represent the true worth of such a treasure, and I shall always feel that I have robbed him."

"Oh, pray, pray don't talk of payment," the hostess implored, with a gesture of her heavily-ringed hands. "You will hurt him dreadfully if you think of such a thing. He feels himself richly paid, I assure you, by having a chance to do you a little service. And such a mere trifle as it is!"

"No, indeed, it is not a trifle, Mrs. Aarons—very far from it. The thing is much too valuable for me to—to"—Mrs. Duff-Scott hesitated, and her face was rather red—"to deprive you of it in that way. I don't feel that I can take it as a present—a bit of real Derby-Chelsea that you might never find a specimen of again—really I don't."

"Oh, please"—and Mrs. Aarons's voice was at once reproachful and persuasive—"please! I know you wouldn't wish to hurt us."

A little more discussion ensued, which Paul watched with an amused smile; and Mrs. Duff-Scott gave in.

"Well, if you insist—but you are really too good. It makes me quite uncomfortable to take such a treasure from you. However, perhaps, some day I may be able to contribute to your collection."

Like her famous model, Mrs. Ponsonby de Tompkins, Mrs. Aarons stalked her big game with all kinds of stratagems, and china was the lure with which she had caught Mrs. Duff-Scott. This was a lady who possessed not only that most essential and valuable qualification of a lady, riches, but had also a history that was an open page to all men. It had not much heraldic emblazonment about it, but it showed a fair and honourable record of domestic and public circumstances that no self-respecting woman could fail to take social credit for. By virtue of these advantages, and of a somewhat imperious, though generous and unselfish, nature, she certainly did exercise that right to be "proud" which, in such a case, the most democratic of communities will cheerfully concede. She had been quite inaccessible to Mrs. Aarons, whom she was wont to designate a "person," long after that accomplished woman had carried the out-works of the social citadel in which she dwelt, and no doubt she would have been inaccessible to the last. Only she had a weakness—she had a hobby (to change the metaphor a little) that ran away with her, as hobbies will, even in the case of the most circumspect of women; and that hobby, exposed to the seductions of a kindred hobby, broke down and trampled upon the barriers of caste. It was the Derby-Chelsea specimen that had brought Mrs. Duff-Scott to occupy a sofa in Mrs. Aarons's drawing-room—to their mutual surprise, when they happened to think of it.

She rose from that sofa now, slightly perturbed, saying she must go and find Mr. Aarons and acknowledge the obligation under which he had placed her, while all the time she was cudgelling her brains to think by what means and how soon she could discharge it—regretting very keenly for the moment that she had put herself in the way of people who did not understand the fine manners which would have made such a dilemma impossible. Her hostess jumped up immediately, and the two ladies passed slowly down the room in the direction of the corner where our neglected girls were sitting. Paul followed at a respectful distance, and was gratified to see Mrs. Duff-Scott stop at the piano, in place of hunting for her host (who was never a conspicuous feature of these entertainments), and shake hands cordially with a tall German in spectacles who had just risen from the music-stool. He had come to Mrs. Aarons's Friday in a professional capacity, but he was a sufficiently great artist for a great lady to make an equal of him.

"Ah, my dear Herr Wüllner," she said, in a very distinct voice, "I was listening, and I thought I could not be mistaken in your touch. Heller's Wanderstunden, wasn't it?" And they plunged head first into musical talk such as musical people (who never care in the least how much unmusical people may be bored by it) love to indulge in whenever an occasion offers, while Mrs. Aarons stood by, smiling vaguely, and not understanding a word of it. Paul Brion listened to them for a few minutes, and a bright idea came into his head.

[CHAPTER XII.]

TRIUMPH.

Our girls still sat in their corner, but a change had come over them within the last few minutes. A stout man sitting near them was talking to Elizabeth across Eleanor's lap—Eleanor lying back in her seat, and smiling amiably as she listened to them; and Miss King was looking animated and interested, and showed some signs of enjoying herself at last. Patty also had lost her air of angry dignity, and was leaning a little forward, with her hands clasped on her knees, gazing at Herr Wüllner's venerable face with rapt enthusiasm. Paul, regarding her for a moment, felt himself possessed of sufficient courage to declare his presence, and, waiting until he could catch her eye, bowed pleasantly. She looked across at him with no recognition at first, then gave a little start, bent her head stiffly, and resumed her attentive perusal of Herr Wüllner's person. "Ah," thought Paul, "the old fellow has woke her up. And she wants him to play again." Mrs. Duff-Scott had dropped into a chair by the piano, and sat there contentedly, talking to the delighted musician, who had been as a fish out of water since he came into the room, and was now swimming at large in his native element again. She was a distinguished looking matron of fifty or thereabouts, with a handsome, vivacious, intelligent face and an imposing presence generally; and she had an active and well-cultivated mind which concerned itself with many other things than china. Having no necessity to work, no children on whom to expend her exuberant energies, and being incapable of finding the ordinary woman's satisfaction in the ordinary routine of society pleasures, she made ardent pursuits for herself in several special directions. Music was one. Herr Wüllner thought she was the most enlightened being in female shape that he had ever known, because she "understood" music—what was really music and what was not (according to his well-trained theories). She had, in the first place, the wonderful good sense to know that she could not play herself, and she held the opinion that people in general had no business to set themselves up to play, but only those who had been "called" by Divine permission and then properly instructed in the science of their art. "We won't look at bad pictures, nor read trashy books," she would say. "Why should our artistic sense be depraved and demoralised through our ears any more than through our eyes? Mothers should know better, my dear Herr Wüllner, and keep the incapables in the background. All girls should learn, if they like learning—in which case it does them good, and delights the domestic circle; but if at sixteen they can't play—what we call play—after having had every chance given them, they should leave off, so as to use the time better, or confine their performances to a family audience." And Mrs. Duff-Scott had the courage of her convictions, and crushed unrelentingly those presumptuous amateurs (together with their infatuated mammas) who thought they could play when they couldn't, and who regarded music as a mere frivolous drawing-room amusement for the encouragement of company conversation. Herr Wüllner delighted in her. The two sat talking by the piano, temporarily indifferent to what was going on around them, turning over a roll of music sheets that had had a great deal of wear and tear, apparently. Mrs. Aarons sat beside them, fanning herself and smiling, casting about her for more entertaining converse. And Paul Brion stood near his hostess, listening and watching for his opportunity. Presently it came.

Mrs. Duff-Scott lifted up a sheet of crabbed manuscript as yellowed by time as Patty's Brussels lace, and said: "This is not quite the thing for a mixed audience, is it?"

"Ah, no, you are right; it is the study of Haydn that a friend of mine asked of me yesterday, and that I propose to read to him to-night," said Herr Wüllner, in that precise English and with that delicate pronunciation with which the cultivated foreigner so often puts us to shame. "It is, you perceive, an arrangement for one violin and a piano only—done by a very distinguished person for a lady who was for a short time my pupil, when I was a young man. You have heard it with the four-stringed instruments at your house; that was bad—bad! Ach! that second violin squeaked like the squeaking of a pig, and it was always in the wrong place. But in good hands it is sublime. This"—and he sighed as he added more sheets to the one she held and was steadily perusing—"this is but a crippled thing, perhaps; the piano, which should have none of it, has it all—and no one can properly translate that piano part—not one in ten thousand. But it is well done. Yes, it is very well done. And I have long been wanting my friend to try it with me."

"And what about the young lady for whom it was written?—which part did she take?"

"The piano—the piano. But then she had a wonderful execution and sympathy—it was truly wonderful for a lady, and she so young. Women play much better now, as a rule, but I never hear one who is an amateur play as she did. And so quick—so quick! It was an inspiration with her. Yes, this was written on purpose for that lady—I have had it ever since—it has never been published. The manuscript is in her own hand. She wrote out much of her music in her own hand. It was many, many years ago, and I was a young man then. We were fellow-pupils before I became her master, and she was my pupil only for a few weeks. It was a farce—a farce. She did not play the violin, but in everything else she was better than I. Ah, she was a great genius, that young lady. She was a great loss to the world of art."

"Did she die, Herr Wüllner?"

"She eloped," he said softly, "she ran away with a scapegrace. And the ship she sailed in was lost at sea."

"Dear me! How very sad. Well, you must make your friend try it over, and, if you manage it all right, bring him with you to my house on Monday evening and let me hear it."

"That shall give me great pleasure," said the old man, bowing low.

"You have your violin with you, I suppose?" she asked.

"It is in the hall, under my cloak. I do not bring it into this room," he replied.

"Why not?" she persisted. "Go and fetch it, Herr Wüllner, and let Mrs. Aarons hear you play it"—suddenly bethinking herself of her hostess and smiling upon that lady—"if she has never had that treat before."

Mrs. Aarons was eager to hear the violin, and Herr Wüllner went himself, though reluctantly, to fetch his treasure from the old case that he had hidden away below. When he had tuned up his strings a little, and had tucked the instrument lovingly under his chin, he looked at Mrs. Duff-Scott and said softly, "What?"

"Oh," cried Mrs. Aarons, striking in, "play that—you know—what you were talking of just now—what Mrs. Duff-Scott wanted so much to hear. I want to hear it too."

"Impossible—impossible," he said quickly, almost with a shudder. "It has a piano part, and there is no one here to take that."

Then Paul Brion broke in, conscious that he was running heavy risks of all sorts, but resolved to seize his chance.

"I think there is someone who could play it," he said to Mrs. Aarons, speaking with elaborate distinctness. "The Miss Kings—one of them, at any rate—"

"Nonsense," interrupted Mrs. Aarons, sharply, but under her breath. "Not at all likely." She was annoyed by the suggestion, and wished to treat it as if unheard (it was unreasonable, on the face of it, of course); but Mrs. Duff-Scott caught at it in her direct way. "Who are they? Which are the Miss Kings?" she asked of Paul, putting up her eye-glass to see what manner of man had taken upon himself to interfere.

"My dear lady," sighed Herr Wüllner, dropping his bow dejectedly, "it is out of the question, absolutely. It is not normal music at its best—and I have it only in manuscript. It is impossible that any lady can attempt it."

"She will not attempt it if she cannot do it, Herr Wüllner," said Paul. "But you might ask her."

Mrs. Duff-Scott had followed the direction of his eyes, and her attention was violently arrested by the figures of the three girls sitting together, who were so remarkably unlike the majority of Mrs. Aarons's guests. She took note of all their superficial peculiarities in a moment, and the conviction that the lace and the pearls were real flashed across her like an inspiration. "Is it the young lady with the bright eyes?" she inquired. "What a charming face! Yes, Herr Wüllner, we will ask her. Introduce her to me, Mrs. Aarons, will you?"

She rose as she spoke and sailed towards Patty, Mrs. Aarons following; and Paul Brion held his breath while he waited to see how his reckless enterprise would turn out. In a few minutes Patty came towards the piano, with her head up and her face flushed, looking a little defiant, but as self-possessed as the great lady who convoyed her across the room. The events of the evening had roused her spirit, and strung up her nerves like Herr Wüllner's fiddle-strings, and she, too, was in a daring and audacious mood.

"This is it," said the old musician, looking at her critically as he gave a sheet of manuscript into her hand. It was a wonderful chance, of course, but Patty had seen the facsimile of that manuscript many times before, and had played from it. It is true she had never played with the violin accompaniment—had never so much as seen a violin until she came to Melbourne; but her mother had contrived to make her understand how the more delicate and sensitive instrument ought to be deferred to in the execution of the piano part, and what the whole should sound like, by singing the missing air in her flexible trilling voice; and just now she was in that peculiar mood of exaltation that she felt inspired to dare anything and assured that she should succeed. "You will not be able to read it?" Herr Wüllner suggested persuasively, drawing hope from her momentary silence.

"Oh, yes," she said, looking up bravely: "I think so. You will stop me, please, if I do not play it right." And she seated herself at the piano with a quiet air of knowing what she was doing that confounded the two ladies who were watching her and deeply interested Mrs. Duff-Scott. Paul Brion's heart was beating high with anticipated triumph. Herr Wüllner's heart, on the contrary, sank with a mild despair.

"Well, we will have a few bars," he sighed. "And pray, my dear young lady, don't bang the piano—I mean don't play over me. And try to keep time. But you will never do it—with the best intentions, my dear, you will never be able to read it from such a manuscript as that."

Patty looked up at him with a sort of radiant calmness, and said gently, "Go on. You see you have an opening movement to yourself."

Bewildered, the old man dropped his bow upon the strings, and set forth on his hopeless task. And at exactly the right moment the piano glided in, so lightly, so tenderly, and yet with such admirable precision and delicate clearness, that it justified, for once, its trespass upon ground that belonged to more aerial instruments. It was just what Paul Brion had counted on—though Paul Brion had not the least idea what a wild chance had brought about the fulfilment of his expectations. Patty was able to display her chief accomplishment to the very best advantage, and the sisters were thereby promoted to honour. The cold shade of neglect and obscurity was to chill them no more from this happy moment. It was a much greater triumph than Patty herself had any idea of, or than anybody had had the least reason to expect. She knew that piles of music, all in this self-same handwriting (she had never seen any other and supposed that all manuscript music was alike), were stowed away in the old bureau at home, and in the ottoman which she had constructed out of a packing-case, and that long familiarity had made it as easy to her to read as print; but Herr Wüllner was not in a position to make the faintest guess at such a circumstance. When Elizabeth moved her seat nearer to the piano, as if to support her sister, though he was close enough to see it, he did not recognise in the miniature round her neck the face of that young lady of genius who eloped with a scapegrace, and was supposed to have been drowned at sea with her husband. And yet it was that lady's face. Such wonderful coincidences are continually happening in our small world. It was not more wonderful than that Herr Wüllner, Mrs. Duff-Scott, Paul Brion, and Patty King should have been gathered together round one piano, and that piano Mrs. Aarons's.

The guests were laughing and talking and flirting, as they were wont to do under cover of the music that generally prevailed at these Friday receptions, when an angry "Hush!" from the violinist, repeated by Mrs. Duff-Scott, made a little circle of silence round the performers. And in this silence Patty carried through her responsible undertaking with perfect accuracy and the finest taste—save for a shadowy mistake or two, which, glancing over them as if they were mere phantoms of mistakes, and recovering herself instantly, only served to show more clearly the finished quality of her execution, and the thoroughness of her musical experience. She was conscious herself of being in her very best form.

"Ah!" said Herr Wüllner, drawing a long breath as he uttered the exclamation, and softly laying down his violin, "I was mistaken. My dear young lady, allow me to beg your pardon, and to thank you." And he bowed before Patty until his nose nearly touched his knees.

Mrs. Duff-Scott, who was a woman of impulses, as most nice women are, was enthusiastic. Not only had she listened to Patty's performance with all her intelligent ears, but she had at the same time investigated and appraised the various details of her personal appearance, and been particularly interested in that bit of lace about her neck.

"My dear," she said, putting out her hand as the girl rose from the music-stool, "come here and sit by me and tell me where you learned to play like that."

Patty went over to her readily, won by the kind voice and motherly gesture. And, in a very few minutes, Paul had the pleasure of seeing the great lady sitting on a sofa with all three sisters around her, talking to them, and they to her, as if they had known one another for years.

Leaving them thus safe and cared for, he bade good-night to his hostess, and went home to his work, in a mood of high contentment.

[CHAPTER XIII.]

PATTY IN UNDRESS.

When Paul Brion bade Mrs. Aarons good-night, he perceived that she was a little cold to him, and rather wondered at himself that he did not feel inclined either to resent or to grieve over that unprecedented circumstance.

"I am going to steal away," he said in an airy whisper, coming across her in the middle of the room as he made his way to the door. "I have a good couple of hours' work to get through to-night."

He was accustomed to speak to her in this familiar and confidential fashion, though she was but a recent acquaintance, and she had always responded in a highly gratifying way. But now she looked at him listlessly, with no change of face, and merely said, "Indeed."

"Yes," he repeated; "I have a lot to do before I can go to bed. It is delightful to be here; but I must not indulge myself any longer. Good-night."

"Good-night," she said, still unsmiling, as she gave him her hand. "I am sorry you must go so soon." But she did not look as if she were sorry; she looked as if she didn't care a straw whether he went or stayed. However, he pressed her hand with the wonted friendly pressure, and slipped out of the room, unabashed by her assumed indifference and real change of manner, which he was at no great trouble to interpret; and he took a cab to his office—now a humming hive of busy bees improving the shining hours of the gaslit night—and walked back from the city through the shadowy gardens to his lodgings, singing a tuneless air to himself, which, if devoid of music, was a pleasant expression of his frame of mind.

When he reached Myrtle Street the town clocks were striking twelve. He looked up at his neighbours' windows as he passed the gate of No. 6, and saw no light, and supposed they had returned from their revels and gone peaceably to bed. He opened his own door softly, as if afraid of waking them, and went upstairs to his sitting-room, where Mrs. M'Intyre, who loved to make him comfortable, had left him a bit of supper, and a speck of gas about the size of a pea in the burner at the head of his arm-chair; and he pulled off his dress coat, and kicked away his boots, and got his slippers and his dressing-gown, and his tobacco and his pipe, and took measures generally for making himself at home. But before he had quite settled himself the idea occurred to him that his neighbours might not have returned from Mrs. Aarons's, but might, indeed (for he knew their frugal and unconventional habits), be even then out in the streets, alone and unprotected, walking home by night as they walked home by day, unconscious of the perils and dangers that beset them. He had not presumed to offer his escort—he had not even spoken to them during the evening, lest he should seem to take those liberties that Miss Patty resented so much; but now he angrily reproached himself for not having stayed at Mrs. Aarons's until their departure, so that he could, at least, have followed and watched over them. He put down his pipe hastily, and, opening the window, stepped out on the balcony. It was a dark night, and a cold wind was blowing, and the quarter-hour after midnight was chiming from the tower of the Post Office. He was about to go in for his boots and his overcoat, when he was relieved to hear a cab approaching at a smart pace, and to see it draw up at the gate of No. 6. Standing still in the shadow of the partition that divided his enclosure from theirs, he watched the girls descend upon the footpath, one by one, fitfully illuminated from the interior of the vehicle. First Eleanor, then Elizabeth, then Patty—who entered the gate and tapped softly at her street door. He expected to see the driver dismissed, with probably double the fare to which he was entitled; but to his surprise, the cab lingered, and Elizabeth stood at the step and began to talk to someone inside. "Thank you so much for your kindness," she said, in her gentle but clear tones, which were perfectly audible on the balcony. A voice from the cab answered, "Don't mention it, my dear. I am very glad to see as much of you as possible, for I want to know you. May I come and have a little gossip to-morrow afternoon?" It was the voice of Mrs. Duff-Scott, who, after keeping them late at Mrs. Aarons's, talking to them, had frustrated their intention of making their own way home. That powerful woman had "taken them up," literally and figuratively, and she was not one to drop them again—as fine ladies commonly drop interesting impecunious protégées when the novelty of their acquaintance has worn off—save for causes in their own conduct and circumstances that were never likely to arise. Paul Brion, thoroughly realising that his little schemes had been crowned with the most gratifying success, stole back to his rooms, shut the window softly, and sat down to his pipe and his manuscripts. And he wrote such a maliciously bitter article that, when he took it to the office, his editor refused to print it without modifications, on the ground that it would land the paper in an action for libel.

Meanwhile our girls parted from their new friend with affectionate good-nights, and were let into their house by the landlady, who had herself been entertaining company to a late hour. They went upstairs with light feet, too excited to feel tired, and all assembled in Elizabeth's meagrely-appointed bedchamber to take off their finery and to have a little happy gossip before they went to rest. Elizabeth herself, who was not a gushing person, had the most to say at first, pouring out her ingenuous heart in grateful reminiscences of the unparalleled kindness of Mrs. Duff-Scott. "What a dear, dear woman!" she murmured, with soft rapture, as she unwound the watch-chain and locket from her neck and disembarrassed herself of her voluminous fichu. "You can see that what she does and says is real and truthful—I am certain you can trust her. I do not trust Mrs. Aarons—I do not understand her ways. She wanted us to go and see her, and when we went she was unkind to us; at least, she was not polite. I was very sorry we had gone to her house—until Mrs. Duff-Scott came to our sofa to speak to us. But now I feel so glad! For it has given us her. And she is just the kind of friend I have so often pictured to myself—so often longed to know."

"I think it was Patty's playing that gave us Mrs. Duff-Scott," said Eleanor, who was sitting by the dressing table with her frock unbuttoned. "She is fond of music, and really there was no one who could play at all except Herr Wüllner—which was a very strange thing, don't you think? And the singing was worse—such sickly, silly sort of songs, with such eccentric accompaniments. I could not understand it, unless the fashion has changed since mother was a girl. I suppose it has. But when Patty and Herr Wüllner got together it was like another atmosphere in the room. How did you come to play so well, Patty?—to be so collected and quiet when there was so much to frighten you? I was so nervous that my hands shook, and I had to squeeze them to keep myself still."

"I was nervous, too, at first," said Patty, who, divested of her dress and laces, was lying all along on Elizabeth's bed, with her pretty bare arms flung up over the pillows, and her hands clasped one over the other at the back of her head. "When we got there, that impudent maid in the room where we took our things off upset me; she looked at our old hats and water-proofs as if she had never seen such things before—and they did seem very shabby amongst all the pretty cloaks and hoods that the other ladies were taking off. And then it was so ignominious to have to find our way to the drawing-room by following other people, and to have our names bawled out as if to call everybody's attention to us, and then not to have attentions. When we trailed about the room, so lost and lonely, with all those fine people watching us and staring at us, my knees were shaking under me, and I felt hot and cold—I don't know how I felt. The only comfort I had was seeing how calm Elizabeth was. She seemed to stand up for us all, and to carry us through it. I felt—I hate to think I could be such an idiot—so nervous and so unhinged, and so miserable altogether, that I should have liked to go away somewhere and have a good cry. But," added Patty, suddenly sitting up in the bed, and removing her hands from the back of her head to her knees, "but after a little while it got too horrid. And then I got angry, and that made me feel much better. And by-and-bye, when they began to play and sing, and I saw how ridiculous they made themselves, I brightened up, and was not nervous any more—for I saw that they were rather ignorant people, in spite of their airs and their fine clothes. When the girl in that beautiful creamy satin dress sang her whining little song about parting and dying half a note flat, while she dashed her hands up and down the keyboard, and they all hung round her when she had done and said how charming it was, I felt that really—" Patty paused, and stared into the obscurity of the room with brilliant, humorous, disdainful eyes, which expressed her sentiments with a distinctness that made further words unnecessary.

"But, you see, if people don't know that you are superior to them—" suggested Eleanor, folding up Elizabeth's best gloves, and wrapping them in tissue paper, with a reflective air.

"Who would care about their knowing?" interposed Elizabeth. "We should not be very much superior to anyone if we could indulge in a poor ambition to seem so. That is not one of Patty's feelings, I think."

"But it is, then," Patty confessed, with honest promptness. "I found it out to-night, Elizabeth. When I saw those conceited people sweeping about in their splendid trains and looking as if all Melbourne belonged to them—when I heard that girl singing that preposterous twaddle, and herself and all her friends thinking she was a perfect genius—I felt that I would give anything, anything, just to rise up and be very grand and magnificent for a little while and crush them all into vulgarity and insignificance."

"Patty!" murmured Elizabeth.

"Yes, my dear, it shocks you, I know. But you wouldn't have me disguise the truth from you, would you? I wanted to pay them out. I saw they were turning up their noses at us, and I longed—I raged—to be in a position to turn up my nose at them, if only for five minutes. I thought to myself, oh, if the door should suddenly open and that big footman shout out, 'His Grace the Duke of So and So;' and they should all be ready to drop on their knees before such a grand person—as you know they would be, Elizabeth; they would grovel, simply—and he should look with a sort of gracious, ducal haughtiness over their heads and say to Mrs. Aarons, 'I am told that I shall find here the daughters of my brother, who disappeared from home when he was young, along with his wife, the Princess So and So.' You know, Elizabeth, our father, who never would talk about his family to anybody, might have been a duke or an earl in disguise, for anything we know, and our mother was the very image of what a princess ought to be—"

"We should have been found out before this, if we had been such illustrious persons," said Elizabeth, calmly.

"Yes, of course—of course. But one needn't be so practical. You are free to think what you like, however improbable it may be. And that is what I thought of. Then I thought, suppose a telegram should be brought in, saying that some enormously wealthy squatter, with several millions of money and no children, had left us all his fortune—"

"I should think that kind of news would come by post," suggested Eleanor.

"It might and it mightn't, Nelly. The old squatter might have been that queer old man who comes to the Library sometimes, and seems to take such interest in seeing us reading so hard. He might have thought that girls who were so studious would have serious views of life and the value of money. Or he might have overheard us castle-building about Europe, and determined to help us to realise our dreams. Or he might have fallen in love with Elizabeth—at a distance, you know, and in a humble, old-fashioned, hopeless way."

"But that doesn't account for the telegram, Patty."

"And have felt himself dying, perhaps," continued Patty, quite solemnly, with her bright eyes fixed on her invisible drama, "and have thought he would like to see us—to speak to Elizabeth—to give some directions and last wishes to us—before he went. No," she added, checking herself with a laugh and shaking herself up, "I don't think it was that. I think the lawyer came himself to tell us. The lawyer had opened the will, and he was a friend of Mrs. Aarons's, and he came to tell her of the wonderful thing that had happened. 'Everyone has been wondering whom he would leave his money to,' he says to her, 'but no one ever expected this. He has left it to three poor girls whom no one has ever heard of, and whom he never spoke to in his life. I am now going to find them out, for they are living somewhere in Melbourne. Their name is King, and they are sisters, without father or mother, or friends or fortune—mere nobodies, in fact. But now they will be the richest women in Australia.' And Mrs. Aarons suddenly remembers us, away there in the corner of the room, and it flashes across her that we are the great heiresses. And she tells the other ladies, and they all flock round us, and—and—"

"And you find yourself in the position to turn up your nose at them," laughed Eleanor. "No one would have guessed your thoughts, Patty, seeing you sitting on that sofa, looking so severe and dignified."

"But I had other thoughts," said Patty, quickly. "These were just passing ideas, of course. What really did take hold of me was an intense desire to be asked to play, so that I might show them how much better we could play than they could. Especially after I heard Herr Wüllner. I knew he, at least, would appreciate the difference—and I thought Mrs. Duff-Scott looked like a person who would, also. And perhaps—perhaps—Paul Brion."

"Oh, Patty!" exclaimed Elizabeth, smiling, but reproachful. "Did you really want to go to the piano for the sake of showing off your skill—to mortify those poor women who had not been taught as well as you had?"

"Yes," said Patty, hardily. "I really did. When Mrs. Duff-Scott came and asked me to join Herr Wüllner in that duet, I felt that, failing the duke and the lawyer, it was just the opportunity that I had been looking and longing for. And it was because I felt that I was going to do so much better than they could that I was in such good spirits, and got on—as I flatter myself I did—so splendidly."

"Well, I don't believe you," said Elizabeth. "You could never have rendered that beautiful music as you did simply from pure vindictiveness. It is not in you."

"No," said Patty, throwing herself back on the bed and flinging up her arms again, "no—when I come to think of it—I was not vindictive all the time. At first I was savage—O yes, there is no doubt about it. Then Herr Wüllner's fears and frights were so charming that I got amused a little; I felt jocose and mischievous. Then I felt Mrs. Duff-Scott looking at me—studying me—and that made me serious again, and also quieted me down and steadied me. Then I was a little afraid that I might blunder over the music—it was a long time since I had played that thing, and the manuscript was pale and smudged—and so I had to brace myself up and forget about the outside people. And as soon as Herr Wüllner reached me, and I began safely and found that we were making it, oh, so sweet! between us—then I lost sight of lots of things. I mean I began to see and think of lots of other things. I remembered playing it with mother—it was like the echo of her voice, that violin!—and the sun shining through a bit of the red curtain into our sitting-room at home, and flickering on the wall over the piano, where it used to stand; and the sound of the sea under the cliffs—whish-sh-sh-sh—in the still afternoon—" Patty broke off abruptly, with a little laugh that was half a sob, and flung herself from the bed with vehemence. "But it won't do to go on chattering like this—we shall have daylight here directly," she said, gathering up her frock and shoes.

[CHAPTER XIV.]

IN THE WOMB OF FATE.

Mrs. Duff-Scott came for her gossip on Saturday afternoon, and it was a long one, and deeply interesting to all concerned. The girls took her to their trustful hearts, and told her their past history and present circumstances in such a way that she understood them even better than they did themselves. They introduced her to their entire suite of rooms, including the infinitesimal kitchen and its gas stove; they unlocked the drawers and cupboards of the old bureau to show her their own and their mother's sketches, and the family miniatures, and even the jewels they had worn the night before, about which she was frankly curious, and which she examined with the same discriminating intelligence that she brought to bear upon old china. They chattered to her, they played to her, they set the kettle on the gas-stove and made tea for her, with a familiar and yet modest friendliness that was a pleasant contrast to the attitude in which feminine attentions were too often offered to her. In return, she put off that armour of self-defence in which she usually performed her social duties, fearing no danger to pride or principle from an unreserved intercourse with such unsophisticated and yet singularly well-bred young women; and she revelled in unguarded and unlimited gossip as freely as if they had been her own sisters or her grown-up children. She gave them a great deal of very plain, but very wholesome, advice as to the necessity that lay upon them to walk circumspectly in the new life they had entered upon; and they accepted it in a spirit of meek gratitude that would have astonished Paul Brion beyond measure. All sorts of delicate difficulties were touched upon in connection with the non-existent chaperon and the omnipotent and omnipresent Mrs. Grundy, and not only touched upon, but frankly discussed, between the kindly woman of the world who wished to serve them and the proud but modest girls who were but too anxious to learn of one who they felt was authorised to teach them. In short, they sat together for more than two hours, and learned in that one interview to know and trust each other better than some of us will do after living for two years under the same roof. When at last the lady called her coachman, who had been mooning up and down Myrtle Street, half asleep upon his box, to the gate of No. 6, she had made a compact with herself to "look after" the three sweet and pretty sisters who had so oddly fallen in her way with systematic vigilance; and they were unconsciously of one mind, that to be looked after by Mrs. Duff-Scott was the most delightful experience, by far, that Melbourne had yet given them.

On the following Monday they went to her house, and spent a ravishing evening in a beautiful, cosy, stately, deeply-coloured, softly-lighted room, that was full of wonderful and historical bric-à-brac such as they had never seen before, listening to Herr Wüllner and three brother artists playing violins and a violoncello in a way that brought tears to their eyes and unspeakable emotions into their responsive hearts. Never had they had such a time as this. There was no Mr. Duff-Scott—he was away from home just now, looking after property in Queensland; and no Mrs. Aarons—she was not privileged to join any but large and comprehensive parties in this select "set." There were no conceited women to stare at and to snub them, and no girls to sing sickly ballads, half a note flat. Only two or three unpretentious music-loving ladies, who smiled on them and were kind to them, and two or three quiet men who paid them charmingly delicate attentions; nothing that was unpleasant or unharmonious—nothing to jar with the exquisite music of a well-trained quartette, which was like a new revelation to them of the possibilities of art and life. They went home that night in a cab, escorted by one of the quiet men, whose provincial rank was such that the landlady curtsied like an English rustic, when she opened the door to him, and paid her young lodgers marked attentions for days afterwards in honour of their acquaintance with such a distinguished individual. And Paul Brion, who was carefully informed by Mrs. M'Intyre of their rise and progress in the world that was not his world, said how glad he was that they had been recognised and appreciated for what they were, and went on writing smart literary and political and social criticisms for his paper, that were continually proving too smart for prudent journalism.

Then Mrs. Duff-Scott left Melbourne for a visit to some relations in Brisbane, and to join her husband on his homeward journey, and the girls fell back into their old quiet life for a while. It was an exceedingly simple and homely life. They rose early every morning—not much after the hour at which their neighbour on the other side of the wall was accustomed to go to bed—and aired, and swept, and scrubbed their little rooms, and made their beds, and polished their furniture, and generally set their dwelling in an exquisite order that is not at all universal with housewives in these days, but must always be the instinct of really well-bred women. They breakfasted frugally after the most of this was done, and took a corresponding meal in the evening, the staple of both being bread and butter; and at mid-day they saved "messing" and the smell of cooking about their rooms, and saved also the precious hours of the morning for their studies, by dining at a restaurant in the city, where they enjoyed a comfortable and abundant repast for a shilling apiece. Every day at about ten o'clock they walked through the leafy Fitzroy and Treasury Gardens, and the bright and busy streets that never lost their charm of novelty, to the Public Library, where with pencils and note-books on the table before them, they read and studied upon a systematic principle until the clock struck one; at which hour they closed their books and set off with never-failing appetites in search of dinner. After dinner, if it was Thursday, they stayed in town for the organ recital at the Town Hall; but on other days they generally sauntered quietly home, with a new novel from Mullen's (they were very fond of novels), and made up their fire, and had a cup of tea, and sat down to rest and chat over their needlework, while one read aloud or practised her music, until the time came to lay the cloth for the unfashionable tea-supper at night-fall. And these countrified young people invariably began to yawn at eight o'clock, and might have been found in bed and asleep, five nights out of six, at half-past nine.

So the days wore on, one very much like another, and all very gentle and peaceful, though not without the small annoyances that beset the most flowery paths of this mortal life, until October came—until the gardens through which they passed to and from the city, morning and afternoon (though there were other and shorter routes to choose from), were thick with young green leaves and odorous with innumerable blossoms—until the winter was over, and the loveliest month of the Australian year, when the brief spring hurries to meet the voluptuous summer, made even Melbourne delightful. And in October the great event that was recorded in the annals of the colony inaugurated a new departure in their career.

On the Thursday immediately preceding the opening of the Exhibition they did not go to the Library as usual, nor to Gunsler's for their lunch. Like a number of other people, their habits were deranged and themselves demoralised by anticipations of the impending festival. They stayed at home to make themselves new bonnets for the occasion, and took a cold dinner while at their work, and two of them did not stir outside their rooms from morn till dewy eve for so much as a glance into Myrtle Street from the balcony.

But in the afternoon it was found that half a yard more of ribbon was required to complete the last of the bonnets, and Patty volunteered to "run into town" to fetch it. At about four o'clock she set off alone by way of an adjoining road which was an omnibus route, intending to expend threepence, for once, in the purchase of a little precious time, but every omnibus was full, and she had to walk the whole way. The pavements were crowded with hurrying folk, who jostled and obstructed her. Collins Street, when she turned into it, seemed riotous with abnormal life, and she went from shop to shop and could not get waited on until the usual closing hour was past, and the evening beginning to grow dark. Then she got what she wanted, and set off home by way of the Gardens, feeling a little daunted by the noise and bustle of the streets, and fancying she would be secure when once those green alleys, always so peaceful, were reached. But to-night even the gardens were infested by the spirit of unrest and enterprise that pervaded the city. The quiet walks were not quiet now, and the sense of her belated isolation in the growing dusk seemed more formidable here instead of less. For hardly had she passed through the gates into the Treasury enclosure than she was conscious of being watched and peered at by strange men, who appeared to swarm all over the place; and by the time she had reached the Gardens nearer home the appalling fact was forced upon her that a tobacco-scented individual was dogging her steps, as if with an intention of accosting her. She was bold, but her imagination was easily wrought upon; and the formless danger, of a kind in which she was totally inexperienced, gave a shock to her nerves. So that when presently, as she hurriedly pattered on, hearing the heavier tread and an occasional artificial cough behind her, she suddenly saw a still more expeditious pedestrian hastening by, and recognised Paul's light figure and active gait, the words seemed to utter themselves without conscious effort of hers—"Mr. Brion!—oh, Mr. Brion, is that you?"

He stopped at the first sound of her voice, looked back and saw her, saw the man behind her, and comprehended the situation immediately. Without speaking, he stepped to her side and offered his arm, which she took for one happy moment when the delightful sense of his protection was too strong for her, and then—reacting violently from that mood—released. "I—I am mortified with myself for being such a fool," she said angrily; "but really that person did frighten me. I don't know what is the matter with Melbourne to-night—I suppose it is the Exhibition." And she went on to explain how she came to be abroad alone at that hour, and to explain away, as she hoped, her apparent satisfaction in meeting him. "It seems to promise for a fine day, does it not?" she concluded airily, looking up at the sky.

Paul Brion put his hands in his pockets. He was mortified, too. When he spoke, it was with icy composure.

"Are you going to the opening?"

"Yes," said Patty. "Of course we are."

"With your swell friends, I suppose?"

"Whom do you mean by our swell friends? Mrs. Duff-Scott is not in Melbourne, I believe—if you allude to her. But she is not swell. The only swell person we know is Mrs. Aarons, and she is not our friend."

He allowed the allusion to Mrs. Aarons to pass. "Well, I hope you will have good seats," he said, moodily. "It will be a disgusting crush and scramble, I expect."

"Seats? Oh, we are not going to have seats," said Patty. "We are going to mingle with the common herd, and look on at the civic functions, humbly, from the outside. We are not swell"—dwelling upon the adjective with a malicious enjoyment of the suspicion that he had not meant to use it—"and we like to be independent."

"O yes, I know you do. But you'll find the Rights of Woman not much good to you to-morrow in the Melbourne streets, I fancy, if you go there on foot without an escort. May I ask how you propose to take care of yourselves?"

"We are going," said Patty, "to start very early indeed, and to take up a certain advantageous position that we have already selected before the streets fill. We shall have a little elevation above the heads of the crowd, and a wall at our backs, and—the three of us together—we shall see the procession beautifully, and be quite safe and comfortable."

"Well, I hope you won't find yourself mistaken," he replied.

A few minutes later Patty burst into the room where her sisters were sitting, placidly occupied with their bonnet-making, her eyes shining with excitement. "Elizabeth, Elizabeth," she cried breathlessly, "Paul Brion is going to ask you to let him be our escort to-morrow. But you won't—oh, you won't—have him, will you?"

"No, dear," said Elizabeth, serenely; "not if you would rather not. Why should we? It will be broad daylight, when there can be no harm in our being out without an escort. We shall be much happier by ourselves."

"Much happier than with him," added Patty, sharply.

And they went on with their preparations for the great day that had been so long desired, little thinking what it was to bring forth.

[CHAPTER XV.]

ELIZABETH FINDS A FRIEND.

They had an early breakfast, dressed themselves with great care in their best frocks and the new bonnets, and, each carrying an umbrella, set forth with a cheerful resolve to see what was to be seen of the ceremonies of the day, blissfully ignorant of the nature of their undertaking. Paul Brion, out of bed betimes, heard their voices and the click of their gate, and stepped into his balcony to see them start. He took note of the pretty costumes, that had a gala air about them, and of the fresh and striking beauty of at least two of the three sweet faces; and he groaned to think of such women being hustled and battered, helplessly, in the fierce crush of a solid street crowd. But they had no fear whatever for themselves.

However, they had not gone far before they perceived that the idea of securing a good position early in the day had occurred to a great many people besides themselves. Even sleepy Myrtle Street was awake and active, and the adjoining road, when they turned into it, was teeming with holiday life. They took their favourite route through the Fitzroy and Treasury Gardens, and found those sylvan glades alive with traffic: and, by the time they got into Spring Street, the crowd had thickened to an extent that embarrassed their progress and made it devious and slow. And they had scarcely passed the Treasury buildings when Eleanor, who had been suffering from a slight sore throat, began to cough and shiver, and aroused the maternal anxiety of her careful elder sister. "O, my dear," said Elizabeth, coming to an abrupt standstill on the pavement, "have you nothing but that wisp of muslin round your neck? And the day so cold—and looking so like rain! It will never do for you to stand about for hours in this wind, with the chance of getting wet, unless you are wrapped up better. We must run home again and fix you up. And I think it would be wiser if we were all to change our things and put on our old bonnets."

"Now, look here, Elizabeth," said Patty, with strong emphasis; "you see that street, don't you?"—and she pointed down the main thoroughfare of the city, which was already gorged with people throughout its length. "You see that, and that"—and she indicated the swarming road ahead of them and the populous valley in the opposite direction. "If there is such a crowd now, what will there be in half-an-hour's time? And we couldn't do it in half-an-hour. Let us make Nelly tie up her throat in our three pocket-handkerchiefs, and push on and get our places. Otherwise we shall be out of it altogether—we shall see nothing."

But the gentle Elizabeth was obdurate on some occasions, and this was one of them. Eleanor was chilled with the cold, and it was not to be thought of that she should run the risk of an illness from imprudent exposure—no, not for all the exhibitions in the world. So they compromised the case by deciding that Patty and Eleanor should "run" home together, while the elder sister awaited their return, keeping possession of a little post of vantage on the Treasury steps—where they would be able to see the procession, if not the Exhibition—in case the crowd should be too great by-and-bye to allow of their getting farther.

"Well, make yourself as big as you can," said Patty, resignedly.

"And, whatever you do," implored Eleanor, "don't stir an inch from where you are until we come back, lest we should lose you."

Upon which they set off in hot haste to Myrtle Street.

Elizabeth, when they were gone, saw with alarm the rapid growth of the crowd around her. It filled up the street in all directions, and condensed into a solid mass on the Treasury steps, very soon absorbing the modest amount of space that she had hoped to reserve for her sisters. In much less than half-an-hour she was so hopelessly wedged in her place that, tall and strong as she was, she was almost lifted off her feet; and there was no prospect of restoring communications with Patty and Eleanor until the show was over. In a fever of anxiety, bitterly regretting that she had consented to part from them, she kept her eyes turned towards the gate of the Gardens, whence she expected them to emerge; and then she saw, presently, the figure of their good genius and deliverer from all dilemmas, Paul Brion, fighting his way towards her. The little man pursued an energetic course through the crowd, which almost covered him, hurling himself along with a velocity that was out of all proportion to his bulk; and from time to time she saw his quick eyes flashing over other people's shoulders, and that he was looking eagerly in all directions. It seemed hopeless to expect him to distinguish her in the sea of faces around him, but he did. Sunk in the human tide that rose in the street above the level of his head, he made desperately for a footing on a higher plane, and in so doing caught sight of her and battled his way to her side. "Oh, here you are!" he exclaimed, in a tone of relief. "I have been so anxious about you. But where is Miss Patty? Where are your sisters?"

"Oh, Mr. Brion," she responded, "you always seem to turn up to help us as soon as we get into trouble, and I am so thankful to see you! The girls had to go home for something, and were to meet me here, and I don't know what will become of them in this crowd."

"Which way were they to come?" he inquired eagerly.

"By the Gardens. But the gates are completely blocked."

"I will go and find them," he said. "Don't be anxious about them. They will be in there—they will be all right. You will come too, won't you? I think I can manage to get you through."

"I can't," she replied. "I promised I would not stir from this place, and I must not, in case they should be in the street, or we should miss them."

"'The boy stood on the burning deck,'" he quoted, with a laugh. He could afford a little jest, though she was so serious, for he was happy in the conviction that the girls had been unable to reach the street, that he should find them disconsolate in the gardens, and compel Miss Patty to feel, if not to acknowledge, that he was of some use and comfort to her, after all. "But I hate to leave you here," he added, glaring upon her uncomfortable but inoffensive neighbours, "all alone by yourself."

"Oh, don't mind me," said Elizabeth, cheerfully. "If you can only find Patty and Nelly, and be so good as to take care of them, I shall be all right."

And so, with apparent reluctance, but the utmost real alacrity, he left her, flinging himself from the steps into the crowd like a swimmer diving into the sea, and she saw him disappear with an easy mind.

Then began the tramp of the procession, first in sections, then in imposing columns, with bands playing, and flags flying, and horses prancing, and the people shouting and cheering as it went by. There were the smart men of the Naval Reserve and the sailors of the warships—English and French, German and Italian, eight or nine hundred strong—with their merry buglers in the midst of them; and there were the troops of the military, with their music and accoutrements; and all the long procession of the trades' associations, and the fire brigades, with the drubbing of drums and the blare of trumpets and the shrill whistle of innumerable fifes accompanying their triumphal progress. And by-and-bye the boom of the saluting guns from the Prince's Bridge battery, and the seven carriages from Government House rolling slowly up the street and round the corner, with their dashing cavalry escort, amid the lusty cheers of Her Majesty's loyal subjects on the line of route assembled.

But long before the Queen's representative made his appearance upon the scene, Elizabeth had ceased to see or care for the great spectacle that she had been so anxious to witness. Moment by moment the crowd about her grew more dense and dogged, more pitilessly indifferent to the comfort of one another, more evidently minded that the fittest should survive in the fight for existence on the Treasury steps. Rough men pushed her forward and backward, and from side to side, treading on her feet, and tearing the stitches of her gown, and knocking her bonnet awry, until she felt bruised and sick with the buffetings that she got, and the keen consciousness of the indignity of her position. She could scarcely breathe for the pressure around her, though the breath of all sorts of unpleasant people was freely poured into her face. She would have struggled away and gone home—convinced of the comforting fact that Patty and Eleanor were safely out of it in Paul Brion's protection—but she could not stir an inch by her own volition. When she did stir it was by some violent propelling power in another person, and this was exercised presently in such a way as to completely overbalance her. A sudden wave of movement broke against a stout woman standing immediately behind her, and the stout woman, quite unintentionally, pushed her to the edge of the step, and flung her upon the shoulder of a brawny larrikin who had fought his way backwards and upwards into a position whence he could see the pageant of the street to his satisfaction. The larrikin half turned, struck her savagely in the breast with his elbow, demanding, with a roar and an oath, where she was a-shoving to; and between her two assailants, faint and frightened, she lost her footing, and all but fell headlong into the seething mass beneath her.

But as she was falling—a moment so agonising at the time, and so delightful to remember afterwards—some one caught her round the waist with a strong grip, and lifted her up, and set her safely on her feet again. It was a man who had been standing within a little distance of her, tall enough to overtop the crowd, and strong enough to maintain an upright position in it; she had noticed him for some time, and that he had seemed not seriously incommoded by the bustling and scuffling that rendered her so helpless; but she had not noticed his gradual approach to her side. Now, looking up with a little sob of relief, her instant recognition of him as a gentleman was followed by an instinctive identification of him as a sort of Cinderella's prince.

In short, there is no need to make a mystery of the matter. At half-past ten o'clock in the morning of the first of October in the year 1880, when she was plunged into the most wretched and terrifying circumstances of her life—at the instant when she was struck by the larrikin's elbow and felt herself about to be crushed under the feet of the crowd—Elizabeth King met her happy fate. She found that friend for whom, hungrily if unconsciously, her tender heart had longed.

[CHAPTER XVI.]

"WE WERE NOT STRANGERS, AS TO US AND ALL IT SEEMED."

"Stand here, and I can shelter you a little," he said, in a quiet tone that contrasted refreshingly with the hoarse excitement around them. He drew her close to his side by the same grip of her waist that had lifted her bodily when she was off her feet, and, immediately releasing her, stretched a strong left arm between her exposed shoulder and the crush of the crowd. The arm was irresistibly pressed upon her own arm, and bent across her in a curve that was neither more nor less than a vehement embrace, and so she stood in a condition of delicious astonishment, one tingling blush from head to foot. It would have been horrible had it been anyone else.

"I am so sorry," he said, "but I cannot help it. If you don't mind standing as you are for a few minutes, you will be all right directly. As soon as the procession has passed the crowd will scatter to follow it."

They looked at each other across a space of half-a-dozen inches or so, and in that momentary glance, upon which everything that mutually concerned them depended, were severally relieved and satisfied. He was not handsome—he had even a reputation for ugliness; but there are some kinds of ugliness that are practically handsomer than many kinds of beauty, and his was of that sort. He had a leathery, sun-dried, weather-beaten, whiskerless, red moustached face, and he had a roughly-moulded, broad-based, ostentatious nose; his mouth was large, and his light grey eyes deeply set and small. Yet it was a strikingly distinguished and attractive face, and Elizabeth fell in love with it there and then. Similarly, her face, at once modest and candid, was an open book to his experienced glance, and provisionally delighted him. He was as glad as she was that fate had selected him to deliver her in her moment of peril, out of the many who might have held out a helping hand to her and did not.

"I am afraid you cannot see very well," he remarked presently. There were sounds in the distance that indicated the approach of the vice-regal carriages, and people were craning their necks over each other's shoulders and standing on tiptoe to catch the first glimpse of them. Just in front of her the exuberant larrikin was making himself as tall as possible.

"Oh, thank you—I don't want to see," she replied hastily.

"But that was what you came here for—like the rest of us—wasn't it?"

"I did not know what I was coming for," she said, desperately, determined to set herself right in his eyes. "I never saw anything like this before—I was never in a crowd—I did not know what it was like."

"Some one should have told you, then."

"We have not any one belonging to us to tell us things."

"Indeed?"

"My sisters and I have lived in the bush always, until now. We have no parents. We have not seen much yet. We came out this morning, thinking we could stand together in a corner and look on quietly—we did not expect this."

"And your sisters—?"

"They went home again. They are all right, I hope."

"And left you here alone?"

Elizabeth explained the state of the case more fully, and by the time she had done so the Governors' carriages were in sight. The people were shouting and cheering; the larrikin was dancing up and down in his hob-nailed boots, and bumping heavily upon the arm that shielded her. Shrinking from him, she drew her feet back another inch or two; upon which the right arm as well as the left was firmly folded round her. And the pressure of those two arms, stretched like iron bars to defend her from harm, the throbbing of his heart upon her shoulder, the sound of his deep-chested breathing in her ear—no consideration of the involuntary and unromantic necessity of the situation could calm the tremulous excitement communicated to her by these things. Oh, how hideous, how simply insupportable it would have been, had she been thus cast upon another breast and into other arms than HIS! As it was, it was all right. He said he feared she was terribly uncomfortable, but, though she did not contradict him, she felt in the secret depths of her primitive soul that she had never been more comfortable. To be cared for and protected was a new sensation, and, though she had had to bear anxious responsibilities for herself and others, she had no natural vocation for independence. Many a time since have they spoken of this first half hour with pride, boasting of how they trusted each other at sight, needing no proofs from experience like other people—a foolish boast, for they were but a man and woman, and not gods. "I took you to my heart the first moment I saw you," he says. "And I knew, even as soon as that, that it was my own place," she calmly replies. Whereas good luck, and not their own wisdom, justified them.

He spoke to her with studied coldness while necessarily holding her embraced, as it were, to protect her from the crowd; at the same time he put himself to some trouble to make conversation, which was less embarrassing to her than silence. He remarked that he was fond of crowds himself—found them intensely interesting—and spoke of Thackeray's paper on the crowd that went to see the man hanged (which she had never read) as illustrating the kind of interest he meant. He had lately seen the crowd at the opening of the Trocadero Palace, and that which celebrated the completion of Cologne Cathedral; facts which proclaimed him a "globe-trotter" and new arrival in Melbourne. The few words in which he described the festival at Cologne fired her imagination, fed so long upon dreams of foreign travel, and made her forget for the moment that he was not an old acquaintance.

"It was at about this hour of the day," he said, "and I stood with the throng in the streets, as I am doing now. They put the last stone on the top of the cross on one of the towers more than six hundred years after the foundation stone was laid. The people were wild with joy, and hung out their flags all over the place. One old fellow came up to me and wanted to kiss me—he thought I must be as overcome as he was."

"And were you not impressed?"

"Of course I was. It was very pathetic," he replied, gently. And she thought "pathetic" an odd word to use. Why pathetic? She did not like to ask him. Then he made the further curious statement that this crowd was the tamest he had ever seen.

"I don't call it tame," she said, with a laugh, as the yells of the larrikin and his fellows rent the air around them.

He responded to her laugh with a pleasant smile, and his voice was friendlier when he spoke again. "But I am quite delighted with it, unimpressive as it is. It is composed of people who are not wanting anything. I don't know that I was ever in a crowd of that sort before. I feel, for once, that I can breathe in peace."

"Oh, I wish I could feel so!" she cried. The carriages, in their slow progress, were now turning at the top of Collins Street, and the hubbub around them had reached its height.

"It will soon be over now," he murmured encouragingly.

"Yes," she replied. In a few minutes the crush would lessen, and he and she would part. That was what they thought, to the exclusion of all interest in the passing spectacle. Even as she spoke, the noise and confusion that had made a solitude for their quiet intercourse sensibly subsided. The tail of the procession was well in sight; the heaving crowd on the Treasury steps was swaying and breaking like a huge wave upon the street; the larrikin was gone. It was time for the unknown gentleman to resume the conventional attitude, and for Elizabeth to remember that he was a total stranger to her.

"You had better take my arm," he said, as she hastily disengaged herself before it was safe to do so, and was immediately caught in the eddy that was setting strongly in the direction of the Exhibition. "If you don't mind waiting here for a few minutes longer, you will be able to get home comfortably."

She struggled back to his side, and took his arm, and waited; but they did not talk any more. They watched the disintegration and dispersion of the great mass that had hemmed them in together, until at last they stood in ease and freedom almost alone upon that coign of vantage which had been won with so much difficulty—two rather imposing figures, if anyone had cared to notice them. Then she withdrew her hand, and said, with a little stiff bow and a bright and becoming colour in her face—"Thank you."

"Don't mention it," he replied, with perfect gravity. "I am very happy to have been of any service to you."

Still they did not move from where they stood.

"Don't you want to see the rest of it?" she asked timidly.

"Do you?" he responded, looking at her with a smile.

"O dear no, thank you! I have had quite enough, and I am very anxious to find my sisters."

"Then allow me to be your escort until you are clear of the streets." He did not put it as a request, and he began to descend the steps before she could make up her mind how to answer him. So she found herself walking beside him along the footpath and through the Gardens, wondering who he was, and how she could politely dismiss him—or how soon he would dismiss her. Now and then she snatched a sidelong glance at him, and noted his great stature and the easy dignity with which he carried himself, and transferred one by one the striking features of his countenance to her faithful memory. He made a powerful impression upon her. Thinking of him, she had almost forgotten how anxious she was to find her sisters until, with a start, she suddenly caught sight of them sitting comfortably on a bench in an alley of the Fitzroy Gardens, Eleanor and Patty side by side, and Paul Brion on the other side of Eleanor. The three sprang up as soon as they saw her coming, with gestures of eager welcome.

"Ah!" said Elizabeth, her face flaming with an entirely unnecessary blush, "there are my sisters. I—I am all right now. I need not trouble you any further. Thank you very much."

She paused, and so did he. She bent her head without lifting her eyes, and he took off his hat to her with profound respect. And so they parted—for a little while.

[CHAPTER XVII.]

AFTERNOON TEA.

When he had turned and left her, Elizabeth faced her sisters with that vivid blush still on her cheeks, and a general appearance of embarrassment that was too novel to escape notice. Patty and Eleanor stared for a moment, and Eleanor laughed.

"Who is he?" she inquired saucily.

"I don't know," said Elizabeth. "Where have you been, dears? How have you got on? I have been so anxious about you."

"But who is he?" persisted Eleanor.

"I have not the least idea, I tell you. Perhaps Mr. Brion knows."

"No," said Mr. Brion. "He is a perfect stranger to me."

"He is a new arrival, I suppose," said Elizabeth, stealing a backward glance at her hero, whom the others were watching intently as he walked away. "Yes, he can have but just arrived, for he saw the last stone put to the building of Cologne Cathedral, and that was not more than six or seven weeks ago. He has come out to see the Exhibition, probably. He seems to be a great traveller."

"Oh," said Eleanor, turning with a grimace to Patty, "here have we been mooning about in the gardens, and she has been seeing everything, and having adventures into the bargain!"

"It is very little I have seen," her elder sister remarked, "and this will tell you the nature of my adventures"—and she showed them a rent in her gown. "I was nearly torn to pieces by the crowd after you left. I am only too thankful you were out of it."

"But we are not at all thankful," pouted Eleanor. "Are we, Patty?" (Patty was silent, but apparently amiable.) "It is only the stitching that is undone—you can mend it in five minutes. We wouldn't have minded little trifles of that sort—not in the least—to have seen the procession, and made the acquaintance of distinguished travellers. Were there many more of them about, do you suppose?"

"O no," replied Elizabeth, promptly. "Only he."

"And you managed to find him! Why shouldn't we have found him too—Patty and I? Do tell us his name, Elizabeth, and how you happened on him, and what he has been saying and doing."

"He took care of me, dear—that's all. I was crushed almost into a pulp, and he allowed me to—to stand beside him until the worst of it was over."

"How interesting!" ejaculated Eleanor. "And then he talked to you about Cologne Cathedral?"

"Yes. But never mind about him. Tell me where Mr. Brion found you, and what you have been doing."

"Oh, we have not been doing anything—far from it. I wish you knew his name, Elizabeth."

"But, my dear, I don't. So leave off asking silly questions. I daresay we shall never see or hear of him again."

"Oh, don't you believe it! I'm certain we shall see him again. He will be at the Exhibition some day when we go there—to-morrow, very likely."

"Well, well, never mind. What are we going to do now?"

They consulted with Paul for a few minutes, and he took them where they could get a distant view of the crowds swarming around the Exhibition, and hear the confused clamour of the bands—which seemed to gratify the two younger sisters very much, in the absence of more pronounced excitement. They walked about until they saw the Royal Standard hoisted over the great dome, and heard the saluting guns proclaim that the Exhibition was open; and then they returned to Myrtle Street, with a sense of having had breakfast in the remote past, and of having spent an enormously long morning not unpleasantly, upon the whole.

Mrs. M'Intyre was standing at her gate when they reached home, and stopped them to ask what they had seen, and how they had enjoyed themselves. She had stayed quietly in the house, and busied herself in the manufacture of meringues and lemon cheese-cakes—having, she explained, superfluous eggs in the larder, and a new lodger coming in; and she evidently prided herself upon her well-spent time. "And if you'll stay, you shall have some," she said, and she opened the gate hospitably. "Now, don't say no, Miss King—don't, Miss Nelly. It's past one, and I've got a nice cutlet and mashed potatoes just coming on the table. Bring them along, Mr. Brion. I'm sure they'll come if you ask them."

"We'll come without that," said Eleanor, walking boldly in. "At least, I will. I couldn't resist cutlets and mashed potatoes under present circumstances—not to speak of lemon cheese-cakes and meringues—and your society, Mrs. M'Intyre."

Paul held the gate open, and Elizabeth followed Eleanor, and Patty followed Elizabeth. Patty did not look at him, but she was in a peaceable disposition; seeing which, he felt happier than he had been for months. They lunched together, with much enjoyment of the viands placed before them, and of each other's company, feeling distinctly that, however small had been their share in the demonstrations of the day, the festival spirit was with them; and when they rose from the table there was an obvious reluctance to separate.

"Now, I'll tell you what," said Eleanor; "we have had dinner with you, Mrs. M'Intyre, and now you ought to come and have afternoon tea with us. You have not been in to see us for years."

She looked at Elizabeth, who hastened to endorse the invitation, and Mrs. M'Intyre consented to think about it.

"And may not I come too?" pleaded Paul, not daring to glance at his little mistress, but appealing fervently to Elizabeth. "Mayn't I come with Mrs. M'Intyre for a cup of tea, too?"

"Of course you may," said Elizabeth, and Eleanor nodded acquiescence, and Patty gazed serenely out of the window. "Go and have your smoke comfortably, and come in in about an hour."

With which the sisters left, and, as soon as they reached their own quarters, set to work with something like enthusiasm to make preparations for their expected guests. Before the hour was up, a bright fire was blazing in their sitting-room, and a little table beside it was spread comfortably with a snow-white cloth, and twinkling crockery and spoons. The kettle was singing on the hearth, and a plate of buttered muffins reposed under a napkin in the fender. The window was open; so was the piano. Patty was flying from place to place, with a duster in her hand, changing the position of the chairs, and polishing the spotless surfaces of the furniture generally, with anxious industry. She had not asked Paul Brion to come to see them, but since he was coming they might as well have the place decent, she said.

When he came at last meekly creeping upstairs at Mrs. M'Intyre's heels, Patty was nowhere to be seen. He looked all round as he crossed the threshold, and took in the delicate air of cheerfulness, the almost austere simplicity and orderliness that characterised the little room, and made it quite different from any room he had ever seen; and then his heart sank, and a cloud of disappointment fell over his eager face. He braced himself to bear it. He made up his mind at once that he had had his share of luck for that day, and must not expect anything more. However, some minutes later, when Mrs. M'Intyre had made herself comfortable by unhooking her jacket, and untying her bonnet strings, and when Elizabeth was preparing to pour out the tea, Patty sauntered in with some needlework in her hand—stitching as she walked—and took a retired seat by the window. He seized upon a cup of tea and carried it to her, and stood there as if to secure her before she could escape again. As he approached she bent her head lower over her work, and a little colour stole into her face; and then she lifted herself up defiantly.

"Here is your tea, Miss Patty," he said, humbly.

"Thanks. Just put it down there, will you?"

She nodded towards a chair near her, and he set the cup down on it carefully. But he did not go.

"You are very busy," he remarked.

"Yes," she replied, shortly. "I have wasted all the morning. Now I must try to make up for it."

"Are you too busy to play something—presently, I mean, when you have had your tea? I must go and work too, directly. I should so enjoy to hear you play before I go."

She laid her sewing on her knee, reached for her cup, and began to sip it with a relenting face. She asked him what kind of music he preferred, and he said he didn't care, but he thought he liked "soft things" best. "There was a thing you played last Sunday night," he suggested; "quite late, just before you went to bed. It has been running in my head ever since."

She balanced her teaspoon in her hand, and puckered her brows thoughtfully. "Let me think—what was I playing on Sunday night?" she murmured to herself. "It must have been one of the Lieder surely—or, perhaps, a Beethoven sonata? Or Batiste's andante in G perhaps?"

"Oh, I don't know the name of anything. I only remember that it was very lovely and sad."

"But we shouldn't play sad things in the broad daylight, when people want to gossip over their tea," she said, glancing at Mrs. M'Intyre, who was energetically describing to Elizabeth the only proper way of making tomato sauce. But she got up, all the same, and went over to the piano, and began to play the andante just above a whisper, caressing the soft pedal with her foot.

"Was that it?" she asked gently, smiling at him as he drew up a low wicker chair and sat down at her elbow to listen.

"Go on," he murmured gratefully. "It was like that."

And she went on—while Mrs. M'Intyre, having concluded her remarks upon tomato sauce, detailed the results of her wide experience in orange marmalade and quince jelly, and Elizabeth and Eleanor did their best to profit by her wisdom—playing to him alone. It did not last very long—a quarter of an hour perhaps—but every moment was an ecstasy to Paul Brion. Even more than the music, delicious as it was, Patty's gentle and approachable mood enchanted him. She had never been like that to him before. He sat on his low chair, and looked up at her tender profile as she drooped a little over the keys, throbbing with a new sense of her sweetness and beauty, and learning more about his own heart in those few minutes than all the previous weeks and months of their acquaintance had taught him. And then the spell that had been weaving and winding them together, as it seemed to him, was suddenly and rudely broken. There was a clatter of wheels and hoofs along the street, a swinging gate and a jangling door bell; and Eleanor, running to the window, uttered an exclamation that effectually wakened him from his dreams.

"Oh, Elizabeth—Patty—it is Mrs. Duff-Scott!"

In another minute the great lady herself stood amongst them, rustling over the matting in her splendid gown, almost filling the little room with her presence. Mrs. M'Intyre gave way before her, and edged towards the door with modest, deprecatory movements, but Paul stood where he had risen, as stiff as a poker, and glared at her with murderous ferocity.

"You see I have come back, my dears," she exclaimed, cordially, kissing the girls one after the other. "And I am so sorry I could not get to you in time to make arrangements for taking you with me to see the opening—I quite intended to take you. But I only returned last night."

"Oh, thank you," responded Elizabeth, with warm gratitude, "it is treat enough for us to see you again." And then, hesitating a little as she wondered whether it was or was not a proper thing to do, she looked at her other guests and murmured their names. Upon which Mrs. M'Intyre made a servile curtsey, unworthy of a daughter of a free country, and Paul a most reluctant inclination of the head. To which again Mrs. Duff-Scott responded by a slight nod and a glance of good-humoured curiosity at them both.

"I'll say good afternoon, Miss King," said Mr. Brion haughtily.

"Oh, good afternoon," replied Elizabeth, smiling sweetly. And she and her sisters shook hands with him and with his landlady, and the pair departed in some haste, Paul in a worse temper than he had ever known himself to indulge in; and he was not much mollified by the sudden appearance of Elizabeth, as he was fumbling with the handle of the front door, bearing her evident if unspoken apologies for having seemed to turn him out.

"You will come with Mrs. M'Intyre another time," she suggested kindly, "and have some more music? I would have asked you to stay longer to-day, but we haven't seen Mrs. Duff-Scott for such a long time—"

"Oh, pray don't mention it," he interrupted stiffly. "I should have had to leave in any case, for my work is all behind-hand."

"Ah, that is because we have been wasting your time!"

"Not at all. I am only too happy to be of use—in the absence of your other friends."

She would not notice this little sneer, but said good-bye and turned to walk upstairs. Paul, ashamed of himself, made an effort to detain her. "Is there anything I can do for you, Miss King?" he asked, gruffly indeed, but with an appeal for forbearance in his eyes. "Do you want your books changed or anything?"

She stood on the bottom step of the stairs, and thought for a moment; and then she said, dropping her eyes, "I—I think you have a book that I should like to borrow—if I might."

"Most happy. What book is it?"

"It is one of Thackeray's. I think you told us you had a complete edition of Thackeray that some one gave you for a birthday present. I scarcely know which volume it is, but it has something in it about a man being hanged—and a crowd—" She broke off with an embarrassed laugh, hearing how oddly it sounded.

"You must mean the 'Sketches,'" he said. "There is a paper entitled 'Going to See a Man Hanged' in the 'London Sketches'—"

"That is the book I mean."

"All right—I'll get it and send it in to you at once—with pleasure."

"Oh, thank you. I'm so much obliged to you. I'll take the greatest care of it," she assured him fervently.

[CHAPTER XVIII.]

THE FAIRY GODMOTHER.

Elizabeth went upstairs at a run, and found Patty and Eleanor trying to make Mrs. Duff-Scott understand who Paul Brion was, what his father was, and his profession, and his character; how he had never been inside their doors until that afternoon, and how he had at last by mere accident come to be admitted and entertained. And Mrs. Duff-Scott, serene but imperious, was delivering some of her point-blank opinions upon the subject.

"Don't encourage him, my dears—don't encourage him to come again," she was saying as Elizabeth entered the room. "He and his father are two very different people, whatever they may think."

"We cannot help being grateful to him," said Patty sturdily. "He has done so much for us."

"Dear child, that's nonsense. Girls can't be grateful to young men—don't you see? It is out of the question. And now you have got me to do things for you."

"But he helped us when we had no one else."

"Yes, that's all right, of course. No doubt it was a pleasure to him—a privilege—for him to be grateful for rather than you. But—well, Elizabeth knows what I mean"—turning an expressive glance towards the discreet elder sister. Patty's eyes went in the same direction, and Elizabeth answered both of them at once.

"You must not ask us to give up Paul Brion," she said, promptly.

"I don't," said Mrs. Duff-Scott. "I only ask you to keep him in his place. He is not the kind of person to indulge with tea and music, you know—that is what I mean."

"You speak as if you knew something against him," murmured Patty, with heightened colour.

"I know this much, my dear," replied the elder woman, gravely; "he is a friend of Mrs. Aarons's."

"And is not Mrs. Aarons—"

"She is very well, in her way. But she likes to have men dangling about her. She means no harm, I am sure," added Mrs. Duff-Scott, who, in the matter of scandal, prided herself on being a non-conductor, "but still it is not nice, you know. And I don't think that her men friends are the kind of friends for you. You don't mind my speaking frankly, my love? I am an old woman, you know, and I have had a great deal of experience."

She was assured that they did not mind it, but were, on the contrary, indebted to her for her good advice. And the subject of Paul Brion was dropped. Patty was effectually silenced by that unexpected reference to Mrs. Aarons, and by the rush of recollections, embracing him and her together, which suddenly gave form and colour to the horrible idea of him as a victim to a married woman's fascinations. She turned away abruptly, with a painful blush that not only crimsoned her from throat to temples, but seemed to make her tingle to her toes; and, like the headlong and pitiless young zealot that she was, determined to thrust him out for ever from the sacred precincts of her regard. Mrs. Duff-Scott was satisfied too. She was always sure of her own power to speak plainly without giving offence, and she found it absolutely necessary to protect these ingenuous maidens from their own ignorance. Needless to say that, since she had adopted them into her social circle, she had laid plans for their ultimate settlement therein. In her impulsive benevolence she had even gone the length of marking down the three husbands whom she considered respectively appropriate to the requirements of the case, and promised herself a great deal of interest and pleasure in the vicarious pursuit of them through the ensuing season. Wherefore she was much relieved to have come across this obscure writer for the press, and to have had the good chance, at the outset of her campaign, to counteract his possibly antagonistic influence. She knew her girls quite well enough to make sure that her hint would take its full effect.

She leaned back in her chair comfortably, and drew off her gloves, while they put fresh tea in the teapot, and cut her thin shavings of bread and butter; and she sat with them until six o'clock, gossiping pleasantly. After giving them a history of the morning's ceremonies, as witnessed by the Government's invited guests inside the Exhibition building, she launched into hospitable schemes for their enjoyment of the gay time that had set in. "Now that I am come back," she said, "I shall take care that you shall go out and see everything there is to be seen. You have never had such a chance to learn something of the world, and I can't allow you to neglect it."

"Dear Mrs. Duff-Scott," said Elizabeth, "we have already been indulging ourselves too much, I am afraid. We have done no reading—at least none worth doing—for days. We are getting all behind-hand. The whole of yesterday and all this morning—"

"What did you do this morning?" Mrs. Duff-Scott interrupted quickly.

They gave her a sketch of their adventures, merely suppressing the incident of the elder sister's encounter with the mysterious person whom the younger ones had begun to style "Elizabeth's young man"—though why they suppressed that none of them could have explained.

"Very well," was her comment upon the little narrative, which told her far more than it told them. "That shows you that I am right. There are a great many things for you to learn that all the books in the Public Library could not teach you. Take my advice, and give up literary studies for a little while. Give them up altogether, and come and learn what the world and your fellow-creatures are made of. Make a school of the Exhibition while it lasts, and let me give you lessons in—a—what shall I call it—social science?—the study of human nature?"

Nothing could be more charming than to have lessons from her, they told her; and they had intended to go to school to the Exhibition as often as they could. But—but their literary studies were their equipment for the larger and fuller life that they looked forward to in the great world beyond the seas. Perhaps she did not understand that?

"I understand this, my dears," the matron replied, with energy. "There is no greater mistake in life than to sacrifice the substance of the present for the shadow of the future. We most of us do it—until we get old—and then we look back to see how foolish and wasteful we have been, and that is not much comfort to us. What we've got, we've got; what we are going to have nobody can tell. Lay in all the store you can, of course—take all reasonable precautions to insure as satisfactory a future as possible—but don't forget that the Present is the great time, the most important stage of your existence, no matter what your circumstances may be."

The girls listened to her thoughtfully, allowing that she might be right, but suspending their judgment in the matter. They were all too young to be convinced by another person's experience.

"You let Europe take care of itself for a bit," their friend proceeded, "and come out and see what Australia in holiday time is like, and what the fleeting hour will give you. I will fetch you to-morrow for a long day at the Exhibition to begin with, and then I'll—I'll—" She broke off and looked from one to another with an unwonted and surprising embarrassment, and then went on impetuously.

"My dears, I don't know how to put it so as not to hurt or burden you, but you won't misunderstand me if I express myself awkwardly—you won't have any of that absurd conventional pride about not being under obligations—it is a selfish feeling, a want of trust and true generosity, when it is the case of a friend who—" She stammered and hesitated, this self-possessed empress of a woman, and was obviously at a loss for words wherein to give her meaning. Elizabeth, seeing what it was that she wanted to say, sank on her knees before her, and took her hands and kissed them. But over her sister's bent head Patty stood up stiffly, with a burning colour in her face. Mrs. Duff-Scott, absently fondling Elizabeth, addressed herself to Patty when she spoke again.

"As an ordinary rule," she said, "one should not accept things from another who is not a relation—I know that. Not because it is improper—it ought to be the most proper thing in the world for people to help each other—but because in so many cases it can never happen without bitter mortifications afterwards. People are so—so superficial? But I—Patty, dear, I am an old woman, and I have a great deal of money, and I have no children; and I have never been able to fill the great gap where the children should be with music and china, or any interest of that sort. And you are alone in the world, and I have taken a fancy to you—I have grown fond of you—and I have made a little plan for having you about me, to be a sort of adopted daughters for whom I could feel free to do little motherly things in return for your love and confidence in me. You will indulge me, and let me have my way, won't you? It will be doing more for me, I am sure, than I could do for you."

"O no—no—no!" said Patty, with a deep breath, but stretching her hands with deprecating tenderness towards their guest. "You would do everything for us, and we could do nothing for you. You would overwhelm us! And not only that; perhaps—perhaps, by-and-bye, you would not care about us so much as you do now—we might want to do something that you didn't like, something we felt ourselves obliged to do, however much you disliked it—and if you got vexed with us, or tired of us—oh, think what that would be! Think how you would regret that you had—had—made us seem to belong to you. And how we should hate ourselves."

She looked at Mrs. Duff-Scott with a world of ardent apology in her eyes, before which the matron's fell, discouraged and displeased.

"You make me feel that I am an impulsive and romantic girl, and that you are the wise old woman of the world," she said with a proud sigh.

But at this, Patty, pierced to the heart, flung her arms round Mrs. Duff-Scott's neck, and crushed the most beautiful bonnet in Melbourne remorselessly out of shape against her young breast. That settled the question, for all practical purposes. Mrs. Duff-Scott went home at six o'clock, feeling that she had achieved her purpose, and entered into some of the dear privileges of maternity. It was more delightful than any "find" of old china. She did not go to sleep until she had talked both her husband and herself into a headache with her numerous plans for the welfare of her protégées, and until she had designed down to the smallest detail the most becoming costumes she could think of for them to wear, when she took them with her to the Cup.

[CHAPTER XIX.]

A MORNING AT THE EXHIBITION.

Paul Brion was wakened from his sleep next morning by the sound of Mrs. Duff-Scott's carriage wheels and prancing horses, and sauntering to his sitting-room window about ten minutes later, had the satisfaction of seeing his young neighbours step into the distinguished vehicle and drive away. There was Elizabeth reposing by her chaperon's side, as serene as a princess who had never set foot on common earth; and there were Patty and Eleanor, smiling and animated, lovelier than their wont, if that could be, nestling under the shadow of two tall men-servants in irreproachable liveries, with cockades upon their hats. It was a pretty sight, but it spoiled his appetite for his breakfast. He could no longer pretend that he was thankful for the fruition of his desires on their behalf. He could only feel that they were gone, and that he was left behind—that a great gulf had suddenly opened between them and him and the humble and happy circumstances of yesterday, with no bridge across it that he could walk over.

The girls, for their part, practically forgot him, and enjoyed the difference between to-day and yesterday in the most worldly and womanly manner. The sensation of bowling along the streets in a perfectly-appointed carriage was as delicious to them as it is to most of us who are too poor to indulge in it as a habit; for the time being it answered all the purposes of happiness as thoroughly as if they had never had any higher ambition than to cut a dash. They went shopping with the fairy godmother before they went to the Exhibition, and that, too, was absorbingly delightful—both to Elizabeth, who went in with Mrs. Duff-Scott to assist her in her purchases, and to the younger sisters, who reposed majestically in the carriage at the door. Patty's quick eyes caught sight of Mrs. Aarons and a pair of her long-nosed children walking on the pavement, and she cheerfully owned herself a snob and gloried in it. It gave her unspeakable satisfaction, she said, to sit there and look down upon Mrs. Aarons.

As they passed the Melbourne Club on their way to the Exhibition, the coachman was hailed by the elder of two gentlemen who were sauntering down the steps, and they were introduced for the first time to the fairy godmother's husband. Major Duff-Scott, an ex-officer of dragoons and a late prominent public man of his colony (he was prominent still, but for his social, and not his official qualifications), was a well-dressed and well-preserved old gentleman, who, having sown a large and miscellaneous crop of wild oats in the course of a long career, had been rewarded with great wealth and all the privileges of the highest respectability. He had been a prodigal, but he had enjoyed it—never knowing the bitterness of either hunger or husks. He had tasted dry bread at times, as a matter of course, but only just enough of it to give a proper relish to the abundant cakes and ale that were his portion; and the proverb which says you cannot eat your cake and have it was a perfectly dead letter in his case. He had been eating his all his life, and he had got it still. In person he was the most gentle-looking little man imaginable—about half the size of his imposing wife, thin and spare, and with a little stoop in his shoulders; but there was an alertness in his step and a brightness in his eye, twinkling remotely between the shadow of his hat brim and a bulging mass of white moustache that covered all the lower part of his small face, which had suggestions of youth and vigour about them that were lacking in the figure and physiognomy of the young man at his side. When he came up to the carriage door to be introduced to his wife's protégées, whom he greeted with as much cordiality as Mrs. Duff-Scott could have desired, they did not know why it was that they so immediately lost the sense of awe with which they had contemplated the approach of a person destined to have so formidable a relation to themselves. They shook hands with him, they made modest replies to his polite inquiries, they looked beyond his ostensible person to the eyes that looked at them; and then their three grave faces relaxed, and in half a minute were brimming over with smiles. They felt at home with Major Duff-Scott at once.

"Come, come," said the fairy godmother rather impatiently, when something like a fine aroma of badinage was beginning to perfume the conversation, "you must not stop us now. We want to have a long morning. You can join us at the Exhibition presently, if you like, and bring Mr. Westmoreland." She indicated the young man who had been talking to her while her spouse made the acquaintance of her companions, and who happened to be one of the three husbands whom she had selected for those young ladies. He was the richest of them all, and the most stupid, and therefore he seemed to be cut out for Patty, who, being so intellectual and so enterprising, would not only make a good use of his money, but would make the best that was to be made of him. "My dears," she said, turning towards the girls, "let me introduce Mr. Westmoreland to you. Mr. Westmoreland, Miss King—Miss Eleanor King—Miss Patty King."

The heavy young man made a heavy bow to each, and then stared straight at Eleanor, and studied her with calm attention until the carriage bore her from his sight. She, with her tender blue eyes and her yellow hair, and her skin like the petals of a blush rose, was what he was pleased to call, in speaking of her a little later to a confidential friend, the "girl for him." Of Patty he took no notice whatever.

Mrs. Duff-Scott, on her way to Carlton, stopped to speak to an acquaintance who was driving in an opposite direction, and by the time she reached the Exhibition, she found that her husband's hansom had arrived before her, and that he and Mr. Westmoreland were waiting at the entrance to offer their services as escort to the party. The major was the best of husbands, but he was not in the habit of paying her these small attentions; and Mr. Westmoreland had never been known, within her memory of him, to put himself to so much trouble for a lady's convenience. Wherefore the fairy godmother smiled upon them both, and felt that the Fates were altogether propitious to her little schemes. They walked up the pathway in a group, fell necessarily into single file in the narrow passage where they received and returned their tickets, and collected in a group again under the great dome, where they stood to look round on the twenty acres of covered space heaped with the treasures of those nations which Victoria welcomed in great letters on the walls. Mrs. Duff-Scott hooked her gold-rimmed glasses over her nose, and pointed out to her husband wherein the building was deficient, and wherein superfluous, in its internal arrangements and decorations. In her opinion—which placed the matter beyond discussion—the symbolical groups over the arches were all out of drawing, the colouring of the whole place vulgar to a degree, and the painted clouds inside the cupola enough to make one sick. The major endorsed her criticisms, perfunctorily, with amused little nods, glancing hither and thither in the directions she desired. "Ah, my dear," said he, "you mustn't expect everybody to have such good taste as yours." Mr. Westmoreland seemed to have exhausted the Exhibition, for his part; he had seen it all the day before, he explained, and he did not see what there was to make a fuss about. With the exception of some mysteries in the basement, into which he darkly hinted a desire to initiate the major presently, it had nothing about it to interest a man who, like him, had just returned from Europe and had seen the Paris affair. But to our girls it was an enchanted palace of delights—far exceeding their most extravagant anticipations. They gave no verbal expression to their sentiments, but they looked at each other with faces full of exalted emotion, and tacitly agreed that they were perfectly satisfied. The fascination of the place, as a storehouse of genuine samples of the treasures of that great world which they had never seen, laid hold of them with a grip that left a lasting impression. Even the rococo magnificence of the architecture and its adornments, which Mrs. Duff-Scott, enlightened by a large experience, despised, affected their untrained imaginations with all the force of the highest artistic sublimity. A longing took possession of them all at the same moment to steal back to-morrow—next day—as soon as they were free again to follow their own devices—and wander about the great and wonderful labyrinth by themselves and revel unobserved in their secret enthusiasms.

However, they enjoyed themselves to-day beyond all expectation. After skimming the cream of the many sensations offered to them, sauntering up and down and round and round through the larger thoroughfares in a straggling group, the little party, fixing upon their place of rendezvous and lunching arrangements, paired themselves for a closer inspection of such works of art as they were severally inclined to. Mrs. Duff-Scott kept Patty by her side, partly because Mr. Westmoreland did not seem to want her, and partly because the girl was such an interesting companion, being wholly absorbed in what she had come to see, and full of intelligent appreciation of everything that was pointed out to her; and this pair went a-hunting in the wildernesses of miscellaneous pottery for such unique and precious "bits" as might be secured, on the early bird principle, for Mrs. Duff-Scott's collection. Very soon that lady's card was hanging round the necks of all sorts of quaint vessels that she had greedily pounced upon (and which further researches proved to be relatively unworthy of notice) in her anxiety to outwit and frustrate the birds that would come round presently; while Patty was having her first lesson in china, and showing herself a delightfully precocious pupil. Mr. Westmoreland confined his attentions exclusively to Eleanor, who by-and-bye found herself interested in being made so much of, and even inclined to be a little frivolous. She did not know whether to take him as a joke or in earnest, but either way he was amusing. He strolled heavily along by her side for awhile in the wake of Mrs. Duff-Scott and Patty, paying no attention to the dazzling wares around him, but a great deal to his companion. He kept turning his head to gaze at her, with solemn, ruminating eyes, until at last, tired of pretending she did not notice it, she looked back at him and laughed. This seemed to put him at his ease with her at once.

"What are you laughing at?" he asked, with more animation than she thought him capable of.

"Nothing," said she.

"Oh, but you were laughing at something. What was it? Was it because I was staring at you?"

"Well, you do stare," she admitted.

"I can't help it. No one could help staring at you."

"Why? Am I such a curiosity?"

"You know why. Don't pretend you don't."

She blushed at this, making herself look prettier than ever; it was not in her to pretend she didn't know—nor yet to pretend that his crude flattery displeased her.

"A cat may look at a king," he remarked, his heavy face quite lit up with his enjoyment of his own delicate raillery.

"O yes, certainly," she retorted. "But you see I am not a king, and you are not a cat."

"'Pon my word, you're awfully sharp," he rejoined, admiringly. And he laughed over this little joke at intervals for several minutes. Then by degrees they dropped away from their party, and went straying up and down the nave tête-à-tête amongst the crowd, looking at the exhibits and not much understanding what they looked at; and they carried on their conversation in much the same style as they began it, with, I grieve to say, considerable mutual enjoyment. By-and-bye Mr. Westmoreland took his young companion to the German tent, where the Hanau jewels were, by way of giving her the greatest treat he could think of. He betted her sixpence that he could tell her which necklace she liked the best, and he showed her the several articles (worth some thousands of pounds) which he should have selected for his wife, had he had a wife—declaring in the same breath that they were very poor things in comparison with such and such other things that he had seen elsewhere. Then they strolled along the gallery, glancing at the pictures as they went, Eleanor making mental notes for future study, but finding herself unable to study anything in Mr. Westmoreland's company. And then suddenly came a tall figure towards them—a gentlemanly man with a brown face and a red moustache—at sight of whom she gave a a little start of delighted recognition.

"Hullo!" cried Mr. Westmoreland, "there's old Yelverton, I do declare. He said he'd come over to have a look at the Exhibition."

Old Yelverton was no other than "Elizabeth's young man."

[CHAPTER XX.]

CHINA V. THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY.

Meanwhile, Major Duff-Scott took charge of Elizabeth, and he was very well satisfied with the arrangement that left her to his care. He always preferred a mature woman to a young girl, as being a more interesting and intelligent companion, and he admired her when on a generous scale, as is the wont of small men. Elizabeth's frank face and simple manners and majestic physical proportions struck him as an admirable combination. "A fine woman," he called her, speaking of her later to his wife: "reminds me of what you were when I married you, my dear." And when he got to know her better he called her "a fine creature"—which meant that he recognised other good qualities in her besides that of a lofty stature.

As soon as Mrs. Duff-Scott stated her intention of going to see "what she could pick up," the major waved his hand and begged that he might be allowed to resign all his responsibilities on her behalf. "Buy what you like, my dear, buy what you like," he said plaintively, "but don't ask me to come and look on while you do it. Take Westmoreland—I'm sure he would enjoy it immensely."

"Don't flatter yourselves that I shall ask either of you," retorted his wife. "You would be rather in the way than otherwise. I've got Patty."

"Oh, she's got Patty!" he repeated, looking with gentle mournfulness at the young lady in question, while his far-off eyes twinkled under his hat brim. "I trust you are fond of china, Miss Patty."

"I am fond of everything," Patty fervently replied.

"Oh, that's right. You and Mrs. Duff-Scott will get on together admirably, I foresee. Come, Miss King"—turning to Elizabeth—"let us go and see what we can discover in the way of desirable bric-à-brac. We'll have a look at the Murano ware for you, my dear, if you like"—again addressing his wife softly—"and come back and tell you if there is anything particularly choice. I know they have a lovely bonnet there, all made of the sweetest Venetian glass and trimmed with blue velvet. But you could take the velvet off, you know, and trim it with a mirror. Those wreaths of leaves and flowers, and beautiful pink braids—"

"Oh, go along!" she interrupted impatiently. "Elizabeth, take care of him, and don't let him buy anything, but see what is there and tell me. I'm not going to put any of that modern stuff with my sixteenth century cup and bottle," she added, looking at nobody in particular, with a sudden brightening of her eyes; "but if there is anything pretty that will do for my new cabinet in the morning room—or for the table—I should like to have the first choice."

"Very well," assented her husband, meekly. "Come along, Miss King. We'll promise not to buy anything." He and Elizabeth then set off on their own account, and Elizabeth found herself led straight to the foot of a staircase, where the little major offered his arm to assist her in the ascent.

"But the Murano Court is not upstairs, is it?" she asked, hesitating.

"O no," he replied; "it is over there," giving a little backward nod.

"And are we not going to look at the glass?"

"Not at present," he said, softly. "That will keep. We'll look at it by-and-bye. First, I am going to show you the pictures. You are fond of pictures, are you not?"

"I am, indeed."

"Yes, I was certain of it. Come along, then, I can show you a few tolerably good ones. Won't you take my arm?"

She took his arm, as he seemed to expect it, though it would have been more reasonable if he had taken hers; and they marched upstairs, slowly, in face of the crowd that was coming down.

"My wife," said the major, sententiously, "is one of the best women that ever breathed."

"I am sure she is," assented Elizabeth, with warmth.

"No," he said, "you can't be sure; that is why I tell you. I have known her a long time, and experience has proved it to me. She is one of the best women that ever lived. But she has her faults. I think I ought to warn you, Miss King, that she has her faults."

"I think you ought not," said Elizabeth, with instinctive propriety.

"Yes," he went on, "it is a point of honour. I owe it to you, as the head of my house—the nominal head, you understand—the responsible head—not to let you labour under any delusion respecting us. It is best that you should know the truth at once. Mrs. Duff-Scott is energetic. She is fearfully, I may say abnormally, energetic."

"I think," replied Elizabeth, with decision, "that that is one of the finest qualities in the world."

"Ah, do you?" he rejoined sadly. "That is because you are young. I used to think so, too, when I was young. But I don't now—experience has taught me better. What I object to in my wife is that experience doesn't teach her anything. She won't learn. She persists in keeping all her youthful illusions, in the most obstinate and unjustifiable manner."

Here they reached the gallery and the pictures, but the major saw two empty chairs, and, sitting down on one of them, bade his companion rest herself on the other until she had recovered from the fatigue of getting upstairs.

"There is no hurry," he said wearily; "we have plenty of time." And then he looked at her with that twinkle in his eye, and said gently, "Miss King, you are very musical, I hear. Is that a fact?"

"We are very, very fond of music," she said, smiling. "It is rather a hobby with us, I think."

"A hobby! Ah, that's delightful. I'm so glad it is a hobby. You don't, by happy chance, play the violin, do you?"

"No. We only know the piano."

"You all play the piano?—old masters, and that sort of thing?"

"Yes. My sister Patty plays best. Her touch and expression are beautiful."

"Ah!" he exclaimed again, softly, as if with much inward satisfaction. He was sitting languidly on his chair, nursing his knee, and gazing through the balustrade of the gallery upon the crowd below. Elizabeth was on the point of suggesting that they might now go and look at the pictures, when he began upon a fresh topic.

"And about china, Miss King? Tell me, do you know anything about china?"

"I'm afraid not," said Elizabeth.

"You don't know the difference between Chelsea and Derby-Chelsea, for instance?"

"No."

"Nor between old Majolica and modern?"

"No."

"Nor between a Limoges enamel of the sixteenth century—everything good belongs to the sixteenth century, you must remember—and what they call Limoges now-a-days?"

"No."

"Ah, well, I think very few people do," said the major, resignedly. "But, at any rate"—speaking in a tone of encouragement—"you do know Sèvres and Dresden when you see them?—you could tell one of them from the other?"

"Really," Elizabeth replied, beginning to blush for her surpassing ignorance, "I am very sorry to have to confess it, but I don't believe I could."

The major softly unclasped his knees and leaned back in his chair, and sighed.

"But I could learn," suggested Elizabeth.

"Ah, so you can," he responded, brightening. "You can learn, of course. Will you learn? You can't think what a favour it would be to me if you would learn. Do promise me that you will."

"No, I will not promise. I should do it to please myself—and, of course, because it is a thing that Mrs. Duff-Scott takes an interest in," said Elizabeth.

"That is just what I mean. It is because Mrs. Duff-Scott takes such an interest in china that I want you to cultivate a taste for it. You see it is this way," he proceeded argumentatively, again, still clasping his knees, and looking up at her with a quaint smile from under his hat brim. "I will be frank with you, Miss King—it is this way. I want to induce you to enter into an alliance with me, offensive and defensive, against that terrible energy which, as I said, is my wife's alarming characteristic. For her own good, you understand—for my comfort incidentally, but for her own good in the first place, I want you to help me to keep her energy within bounds. As long as she is happy with music and china we shall be all right, but if she goes beyond things of that sort—well, I tremble for the consequences. They would be fatal—fatal!"

"Where are you afraid she should go to?" asked Elizabeth.

"I am afraid she should go into philanthropy," the major solemnly rejoined. "That is the bug-bear—the spectre—the haunting terror of my life. I never see a seedy man in a black frock coat, nor an elderly female in spectacles, about the house or speaking to my wife in the street, that I don't shake in my shoes—literally shake in my shoes, I do assure you. I can't think how it is that she has never taken up the Cause of Humanity," he proceeded reflectively. "If we had not settled down in Australia, she must have done it—she could not have helped herself. But even here she is beset with temptations. I can see them in every direction. I can't think how it is that she doesn't see them too."

"No doubt she sees them," said Elizabeth.

"O no, she does not. The moment she sees them—the moment she casts a serious eye upon them—that moment she will be a lost woman, and I shall be a desperate man."

The major shuddered visibly, and Elizabeth laughed at his distress. "Whenever it happens that Mrs. Duff-Scott goes into philanthropy," she said, a little in joke and a great deal in earnest, "I shall certainly be proud to accompany her, if she will have me." And, as she spoke, there flashed into her mind some idea of the meaning of certain little sentences that were breathed into her ear yesterday. The major talked on as before, and she tried to attend to what he said, but she found herself thinking less of him now than of her unknown friend—less occupied with the substantial figures upon the stage of action around her than with the delusive scene-painting in the background of her own imagination. Beyond the crowd that flowed up and down the gallery, she saw a dim panorama of other crowds—phantom crowds—that gradually absorbed her attention. They were in the streets of Cologne, looking up at those mighty walls and towers that had been six centuries a-building, shouting and shaking hands with each other; and in the midst of them he was standing, grave and critical, observing their excitement and finding it "pathetic"—nothing more. They were in London streets in the early daylight—daylight at half-past three in the morning! that was a strange thing to think of—a "gentle and good-humoured" mob, yet full of tragic interest for the philosopher watching its movements, listening to its talk, speculating upon its potential value in the sum of humankind. It was the typical crowd that he was in the habit of studying—not like the people who thronged the Treasury steps this time yesterday. Surely it was the Cause of Humanity that had laid hold of him. That was the explanation of the interest he took in some crowds, and of the delight that he found in the uninterestingness of others. That was what he meant when he told her she ought to read Thackeray's paper to help her to understand him.

Pondering over this thought, fitfully, amid the distractions of the conversation, she raised her head and saw Eleanor coming towards her.

"There's Westmoreland and your sister," said the major. "And one of those strangers who are swarming all about the place just now, and crowding us out of our club. It's Yelverton. Kingscote Yelverton he calls himself. He is rather a swell when he's at home, they tell me; but Westmoreland has no business to foist his acquaintance on your sister. He'll have my wife about him if he is not more careful than that."

Elizabeth saw them approaching, and forgot all about the crowd under Cologne Cathedral and the crowd that went to see the man hanged. She remembered only the crowd of yesterday, and how that stately gentleman—could it be possible?—had stood with her amid the crush and clamour, holding her in his arms. For the first time she was able to look at him fairly and see what he was like; and it seemed to her that she had never seen a man of such a noble presence. His eyes were fixed upon her as she raised hers to his face, regarding her steadily, but with inscrutable gravity and absolute respect. The major rose to salute him in response to Mr. Westmoreland's rather imperious demand. "My old friend, whom I met in Paris," said Mr. Westmoreland; "come over to have a look at us. Want you to know him, major. We must do our best to make him enjoy himself, you know."

"Didn't I tell you?" whispered Eleanor, creeping round the back of her sister's chair. "Didn't I tell you he would be here?"

And at the same moment Elizabeth heard some one murmur over her head, "Miss King, allow me to introduce Mr. Yelverton—my friend, whom I knew in Paris—"

And so he and she not only met again, but received Mrs. Grundy's gracious permission to make each other's acquaintance.

[CHAPTER XXI.]

THE "CUP."

Out of the many Cup Days that have gladdened the hearts of countless holiday-makers on the Flemington course assembled, perhaps that of 1880 was the most "all round" satisfactory and delightful to everybody concerned—except the bookmakers, and nobody grieves much over their disasters (though there are several legitimate and highly respected lines of business that are conducted on precisely the same system as governs their nefarious practices). It was, indeed, considered that the discomfiture of the bookmakers was a part of the brilliant success of the occasion. In the capricious spring-time of the year, when cold winds, or hot winds, or storms of rain, or clouds of dust, might any of them have been expected, this second of November displayed a perfect pattern of the boasted Australian climate to the foreigners of all nations who had been invited to enjoy it—a sweet blue sky, a fresh and delicate air, a broad glow of soft and mellow sunshine, of a quality to sufficiently account for the holiday-making propensities of the Australian people, and for the fascination that draws them home, in spite of all intentions to the contrary, when they have gone to look for happiness in other lands. The great racing-ground was in its finest order, the running track sanded and rolled, the lawns watered to a velvet greenness, the promenade level and speckless and elastic to the feet as a ball-room floor; and by noon more than a hundred thousand spectators, well-dressed and well-to-do—so orderly in their coming and going, and when congregated in solid masses together, that the policeman, though doubtless ubiquitous, was forgotten—were waiting to see the triumph of Grand Flâneur. At which time, and throughout the afternoon, Melbourne city was as a city of the dead; shops and warehouses deserted, and the empty streets echoing to a passing footfall with the hollow distinctness of midnight or the early hours of Sunday morning.

While a full half of the crowd was being conveyed to the course by innumerable trains, the sunny road was alive with vehicles of every description—spring-carts and lorries, cabs and buggies, broughams and landaus, and four-in-hand coaches—all filled to their utmost capacity, and displaying the sweetest things in bonnets and parasols. And amongst the best-appointed carriages Major Duff-Scott's was conspicuous, not only for its build and finish, and the excellence of the horses that drew it, and the fit of the livery of the coachman who drove it, but for the beauty and charming costumes of the ladies inside. The major himself, festive in light grey, with his member's card in his button-hole and his field-glass slung over his shoulder, occupied the place of the usual footman on the box seat in order that all the three sisters should accompany his wife; and Mrs. Duff-Scott, having set her heart on dressing her girls for the occasion, had been allowed to have her own way, with the happiest results. The good woman sat back in her corner, forgetting her own Parisian elegance and how it would compare with the Cup Day elegance of rival matrons in the van of rank and fashion, while she revelled in the contemplation of the young pair before her, on whom her best taste had been exercised. Elizabeth, by her side, was perfectly satisfactory in straw-coloured Indian silk, ruffled with some of her own fine old lace, and wearing a delicate French bonnet and parasol to match, with a bunch of Camille de Rohan roses at her throat for colour; but Elizabeth was not a striking beauty, nor of a style to be experimented on. Patty and Eleanor were; and they had been "treated" accordingly. Patty was a harmony in pink—the faintest shell-pink—and Eleanor a study in the softest, palest shade of china-blue; both their dresses being of muslin, lightly frilled, and tied round the waist with sashes; while they wore bewitching little cap-like bonnets, with swathes of tulle under their chins. The effect—designed for a sunny morning, and to be set off by the subdued richness of her own olive-tinted robes—was all that Mrs. Duff-Scott anticipated. The two girls were exquisitely sylph-like, and harmonious, and refined—looking prettier than they had ever done in their lives, because they knew themselves that they were looking so—and it was confidently expected by their chaperon that they would do considerable execution before the day was over. At the back of the carriage was strapped a hamper containing luncheon sufficient for all the potential husbands that the racecourse might produce, and Mrs. Duff-Scott was prepared to exercise discriminating but extensive hospitality.

It was not more than eleven o'clock when they entered the carriage enclosure and were landed at the foot of the terrace steps, and already more carriages than one would have imagined the combined colonies could produce were standing empty and in close order in the paddock on one hand, while on the other the grand stand was packed from end to end. Lawn and terrace were swarming with those brilliant toilets which are the feature of our great annual fête day, and the chief subject of interest in the newspapers of the day after.

"Dear me, what a crowd!" exclaimed Mrs. Duff-Scott, as her horses drew up on the smooth gravel, and she glanced eagerly up the steps. "We shall not be able to find anyone."

But they had no sooner alighted and shaken out their skirts than down from the terrace stepped Mr. Westmoreland, the first and most substantial instalment of expected cavaliers, to assist the major to convoy his party to the field. Mr. Westmoreland was unusually alert and animated, and he pounced upon Eleanor, after hurriedly saluting the other ladies, with such an open preference that Mrs. Duff-Scott readjusted her schemes upon the spot. If the young man insisted upon choosing the youngest instead of the middle one, he must be allowed to do so, was the matron's prompt conclusion. She would rather have begun at the top and worked downwards, leaving fair Eleanor to be disposed of after the elder sisters were settled; but she recognised the wisdom of taking the goods the gods provided as she could get them.

"I do declare," said Mr. Westmoreland, looking straight at the girl's face, framed in the soft little bonnet, and the pale blue disc of her parasol, "I do declare I never saw anybody look so—so—"

"Come, come," interrupted the chaperon, "I don't allow speeches of that sort." She spoke quite sharply, this astute diplomatist, so that the young man who was used to being allowed, and even encouraged, to make speeches of that sort, experienced the strange sensation of being snubbed, and was half inclined to be sulky over it; and at the same moment she quietly seconded his manoeuvres to get to Eleanor's side, and took care that he had his chances generally for the rest of the day.

They joined the two great streams of gorgeous promenaders slowly pacing up and down the long green lawn. Every seat in the stand was occupied and the gangways and gallery so tightly packed that when the Governor arrived presently, driving his own four-in-hand, with the Duke of Manchester beside him, there was some difficulty in squeezing out a path whereby he and his party might ascend to their box. But there were frequent benches on the grass, and it was of far more consequence to have freedom to move and display one's clothes, and opportunities of meeting one's friends, and observing the social aspect of the affair generally, than it was to see the racing to the best advantage—since one had to choose between the two. At least, that was understood to be the opinion of the ladies present; and Cup Day, notwithstanding its tremendous issues, is a ladies' day. The major, than whom no man better loved a first-class race, had had a good time at the Derby on the previous Saturday, and looked forward to enjoying himself as a man and a sportsman when Saturday should come again; but to-day, though sharing a warm interest in the great event with those who thronged the betting and saddling paddock, he meekly gave himself up to be his wife's attendant and to help her to entertain her protégées. He did not find this task a hard one, nor wanting in abundant consolations. He took off Elizabeth, in the first place, to show her the arrangements of the course, of which, by virtue of the badge in his button-hole, he was naturally proud; and it pleased him to meet his friends at every step, and to note the grave respect with which they saluted him out of compliment to the lady at his side—obviously wondering who was that fine creature with Duff-Scott. He showed her the scratching-house, with its four-faced clock in its tall tower, and made erasures on his own card and hers from the latest corrected lists that it displayed; and he taught her the rudiments of betting as practised by her sex. Then he initiated her into the mysteries of the electric bells and telegraphs, and all the other V.R.C. appliances for conducting business in an enlightened manner; showed her the bookmakers noisily pursuing their ill-fated enterprises; showed her the beautiful horses pacing up and down and round and round, fresh and full of enthusiasm for their day's work. And he had much satisfaction in her intelligent and cheerful appreciation of these new experiences.

Meanwhile Mrs. Duff-Scott, in the care of Mr. Westmoreland, awaited their return on the lawn, slowly sweeping to and fro, with her train rustling over the grass behind her, and feeling that she had never enjoyed a Cup Day half so much before. Her girls were admired to her heart's content, and she literally basked in the radiance of their success. She regarded them, indeed, with an enthusiasm of affection and interest that her husband felt to be the most substantial safeguard against promiscuous philanthropy that had yet been afforded her. How hungrily had she longed for children of her own! How she had envied other women their grown-up daughters!—always with the sense that hers would have been, like her cabinets of china, so much more choice and so much better "arranged" than theirs. And now that she had discovered these charming orphans, who had beauty, and breeding, and culture, and not a relative or connection in the world, she did not know how to restrain the extravagance of her satisfaction. As she rustled majestically up and down the lawn, with one fair girl on one side of her and one on the other, while men and women turned at every step to stare at them, her heart swelled and throbbed with the long-latent pride of motherhood, and a sense that she had at last stumbled upon the particular "specimen" that she had all her life been hunting for. The only drawback to her enjoyment in them was the consciousness that, though they were nobody else's, they were not altogether hers. She would have given half her fortune to be able to buy them, as she would buy three bits of precious crockery, for her absolute possession, body and soul—to dress, to manage, to marry as she liked.

The major kept Elizabeth walking about with him until the hour approached for the Maiden Plate race and luncheon. And when at last they joined their party they found that Mrs. Duff-Scott was already getting together her guests for the latter entertainment. She was seated on a bench, between Eleanor and Patty, and before her stood a group of men, in various attitudes of animation and repose, conspicuous amongst whom was the tall form of Mr. Kingscote Yelverton. Elizabeth had only had distant glimpses of him during the four weeks that had passed since he was introduced to her, her chaperon not having seemed inclined to cultivate his acquaintance—probably because she had not sought it for herself; but now the girl saw, with a quickened pulse, that the happiness of speaking to him again was in store for her. He seemed to be aware of her approach as soon as she was within sight, and lifted his head and turned to watch her—still sustaining his dialogue with Mrs. Duff-Scott, who had singled him out to talk to; and Elizabeth, feeling his eyes upon her, had a sudden sense of discomfort in her beautiful dress and her changed surroundings. She was sure that he would draw comparisons, and she did not feel herself elevated by the new dignities that had been conferred upon her.

Coming up to her party, she was introduced to several strangers—amongst others, to the husband Mrs. Duff-Scott had selected for her, a portly widower with a grey beard—and in the conversation that ensued she quite ignored the only person in the group of whose presence she was distinctly conscious. She neither looked at him nor spoke to him, though aware of every word and glance and movement of his; until presently they were all standing upon the slope of grass connecting the terrace with the lawn to see the first race as best they could, and then she found herself once more by his side. And not only by his side, but, as those who could not gain a footing upon the stand congregated upon the terrace elevation, gradually wedged against him almost as tightly as on the former memorable occasion. Below them stood Mrs. Duff-Scott, protected by Mr. Westmoreland, and Patty and Eleanor, guarded vigilantly by the little major. It was Mr. Yelverton himself who had quietly seen and seized upon his chance of renewing his original relations with Elizabeth.

"Miss King," he said, in a low tone of authority, "take my arm—it will steady you."

She took his arm, and felt at once that she was in shelter and safety. Strong as she was, her impulse to lean on him was almost irresistible.

"Now, give me your parasol," he said. The noonday sun was pouring down, but at this critical juncture the convenience of the greatest number had to be considered, and unselfish women were patiently exposing their best complexions to destruction. Of course Elizabeth declared she should do very well until the race was over. Whereupon her companion took her parasol gently from her hand, opened it, and held it—as from his great height he was able to do—so that it shaded her without incommoding other people. And so they stood, in silent enjoyment, both thinking of where and how something like this—and yet something so very different—had happened before, but neither of them saying a word to betray their thoughts, until the first race was run, and the excitement of it cooled down, and they were summoned by Mrs. Duff-Scott to follow her to the carriage-paddock for lunch.

Down on the lawn again they sauntered side by side, finding themselves tête-à-tête without listeners for the first time since they had been introduced to each other. Elizabeth made a tremendous effort to ignore the secret intimacy between them. "It is a lovely day, is it not?" she lightly remarked, from under the dome of her straw-coloured parasol. "I don't think there has been such a fine Cup Day for years."

"Lovely," he assented. "Have you often been here before?"

"I?—oh, no. I have never been here before."

He was silent a moment, while he looked intently at what he could see of her. She had no air of rustic inexperience of the world to-day. "You are beginning to understand crowds," he said.

"Yes—I am, a little." Then, glancing up at him, she said, "How does this crowd affect you? Do you find it all interesting?"

He met her eyes gravely, and then lifted his own towards the hill above the grand stand, which was now literally black with human beings, like a swarming ant-hill.

"I think it might be more interesting up yonder," he said; and then added, after a pause—"if we could be there."

Eleanor was walking just in front of them, chatting airily with her admirer, Mr. Westmoreland, who certainly was making no secret of his admiration; and she turned round when she heard this. "Ah, Mr. Yelverton," she said, lightly, "you are very disappointing. You don't care for our great Flemington show. You are not a connoisseur in ladies' dresses, I suppose."

"I know when a lady's dress is becoming, Miss Eleanor," he promptly responded, with a smile and bow. At which she blushed and laughed, and turned her back again. For the moment he was a man like other men who enjoy social success and favour—ready to be all things to all women; but it was only for the moment. Elizabeth noted, with a swelling sense of pride and pleasure, that he was not like that to her.

"I am out of my element in an affair of this kind," he said, in the undertone that was meant for her ear alone.

"What is your element?"

"Perhaps I oughtn't to call it my element—the groove I have got into—my 'walk of life,' so to speak."

"Yes?"

"I'll tell you about it some day—if I ever get the chance. I can't here."

"I should like to know. And I can guess a little. You don't spend life wholly in getting pleasure for yourself—you help others."

"What makes you think that?"

"I am sure of it."

"Thank you."

Elizabeth blushed, and could not think of a remark to make, though she tried hard.

"Just at present," he went on, "I am on pleasure bent entirely. I am taking several months' holiday—doing nothing but amusing myself."

"A holiday implies work."

"I suppose we all work, more or less."

"Oh, no, we don't. Not voluntarily—not disinterestedly—in that way."

"You mean in my way?"

"Yes."

"Ah, I see that Westmoreland has been romancing."

"I have not heard a word from Mr. Westmoreland—he has never spoken of you to me."

"Who, then?"

"Nobody."

"These are your own conjectures?"

She made no reply, and they crossed the gravelled drive and entered the labyrinth of carriages where the major's servants had prepared luncheon in and around his own spacious vehicle, which was in a position to lend itself to commissariat purposes. They all assembled there, the ladies in the carriage, the gentlemen outside, and napkins and plates were handed round and champagne uncorked; and they ate and drank together, and were a very cheerful party. Mr. Yelverton contributed witty nothings to the general entertainment—with so much happy tact that Mrs. Duff-Scott was charmed with him, and said afterwards that she had never met a man with finer manners. While the other men waited upon their hostess and the younger sisters, he stood for the most part quietly at Elizabeth's elbow, joining freely in the badinage round him without once addressing her—silently replenishing her plate and her glass when either required it with an air of making her his special charge that was too unobtrusive to attract outside attention, but which was more eloquent than any verbal intercourse could have been to themselves. Elizabeth attempted no analysis of her sweet and strange sensations. She took them from his hand, as she took her boned turkey and champagne, without question or protest. She only felt that she was happy and satisfied as she had never been before.

Later in the afternoon, when the great Cup race and all the excitement of the day was over, Mrs. Duff-Scott gathered her brood together and took leave of her casual male guests.

"Good-bye, Mr. Yelverton," she said cordially, when his turn came to bid her adieu; "you will come and see me at my own house, I hope?"

Elizabeth looked up at him when she heard the words. She could not help it—she did not know what she did. And in her eyes he read the invitation that he declared gravely he would do himself the honour to accept.

[CHAPTER XXII.]

CROSS PURPOSES.

While Elizabeth was thus happily absorbed in her "young man," and Eleanor making an evident conquest of Mr. Westmoreland, Patty, who was rather accustomed to the lion's share of whatever interesting thing was going on, had very little enjoyment. For the first hour or two she was delighted with the beauty of the scene and the weather and her own personal circumstances, and she entered into the festive spirit of the day with the ardour of her energetic temperament. But in a little while the glamour faded. A serpent revealed itself in Paradise, and all her innocent pleasure was at an end.

That serpent was Mrs. Aarons. Or, rather, it was a hydra-headed monster, consisting of Mrs. Aarons and Paul Brion combined. Poor Paul had come to spend a holiday afternoon at the races like everybody else, travelling to the course by train along with the undistinguished multitude, with the harmless intention of recruiting his mind, and, at the same time, storing it with new impressions. He had meant to enjoy himself in a quiet and independent fashion, strolling amongst the crowd and studying its various aspects from the point of view of a writer for the press to whom men and women are "material" and "subjects," and then to go home as soon as the Cup race was over, and, after an early dinner, to spend a peaceful solitary evening, embodying the results of his observations in a brilliant article for his newspaper. But, before he had well thought out the plan of his paper, he encountered Mrs. Aarons; and to her he was a helpless captive for the whole live-long afternoon. Mrs. Aarons had come to the course in all due state, attired in one of the few real amongst the many reputed Worth dresses of the day, and reclining in her own landau, with her long-nosed husband at her side. But after her arrival, having lost the shelter of her carriage, and being amongst the many who were shut out from the grand stand, she had felt just a little unprotected and uncared-for. The first time she stopped to speak to a friend, Mr. Aarons took the opportunity to slip off to the saddling paddock, where the astute speculator was speedily absorbed in a more congenial occupation than that of idling up and down the promenade; and the other gentlemen who were so assiduous in their attendance upon her in the ordinary way had their own female relatives to look after on this extraordinary occasion. She joined one set and then another of casual acquaintances whom she chanced to meet, but her hold upon them all was more or less precarious; so that when by-and-bye she saw Paul Brion, threading his way alone amongst the throng, she pounced upon him thankfully, and confided herself to his protection. Paul had no choice but to accept the post of escort assigned to him under such circumstances, nor was he at all unwilling to become her companion. He had been rather out in the cold lately. Patty, though nominally at home in Myrtle Street, had been practically living with Mrs. Duff-Scott for the last few weeks, and he had scarcely had a glimpse of her, and he had left off going to Mrs. Aarons's Fridays since the evening that she snubbed him for Patty's sake. The result was that he was in a mood to appreciate women's society and to be inclined to melt when the sunshine of his old friend's favour was poured upon him again.

They greeted each other amicably, therefore, and made up the intangible quarrel that was between them. Mrs. Aarons justified her reputation as a clever woman by speedily causing him to regard her as the injured party, and to wonder how he could have been such a brute as to wound her tender susceptibilities as he had done. She insinuated, with the utmost tact, that she had suffered exceedingly from the absence of his society, and was evidently in a mood to revive the slightly sentimental intercourse that he had not found disagreeable in earlier days. Paul, however, was never less inclined to be sentimental in her company than he was to-day, in spite of his cordial disposition. He was changed from what he was in those earlier days; he felt it as soon as she began to talk to him, and perfectly understood the meaning of it. After a little while she felt, too, that he was changed, and she adapted herself to him accordingly. They fell into easy chat as they strolled up and down, and were very friendly in a harmless way. They did not discuss their private feelings at all, but only the topics that were in every-day use—the weather, the races, the trial of Ned Kelly, the wreck of the Sorata, the decay of Berryism—anything that happened to come into their heads or to be suggested by the scene around them. Nevertheless, they had a look of being very intimate with each other to the superficial eye of Mrs. Grundy. People with nothing better to do stared at them as they meandered in and out amongst the crowd, he and she tête-à-tête by their solitary selves; and those who knew they were legally unrelated were quick to discover a want of conventional discretion in their behaviour. Mrs. Duff-Scott, for instance, who abhorred scandal, made use of them to point a delicate moral for the edification of her girls.

Paul, who was a good talker, was giving his companion an animated account of the French plays going on at one of the theatres just then—which she had not yet been to see—and describing with great warmth the graceful and finished acting of charming Madame Audrée, when he was suddenly aware of Patty King passing close beside him. Patty was walking at her chaperon's side, with her head erect, and her white parasol, with its pink lining, held well back over her shoulder, a vision of loveliness in her diaphanous dress. He caught his breath at sight of her, looking so different from her ordinary self, and was about to raise his hat, when—to his deep dismay and surprise—she swept haughtily past him, meeting his eyes fairly, with a cold disdain, but making no sign of recognition.

The blood rushed into his face, and he set his teeth, and walked on silently, not seeing where he went. For a moment he felt stunned with the shock. Then he was brought to himself by a harsh laugh from Mrs. Aarons. "Dear me," said she, in a high tone, "the Miss Kings have become so grand that we are beneath their notice. You and I are not good enough for them now, Mr. Brion. We must hide our diminished heads."

"I see," he assented, with savage quietness. "Very well. I am quite ready to hide mine."

Meanwhile Patty, at the farther end of the lawn, was overwhelmed with remorse for what she had done. At the first sight of him, in close intercourse with that woman who, Mrs. Duff-Scott again reminded her, was not "nice"—who, though a wife and mother, liked men to "dangle" round her—she had arraigned and judged and sentenced him with the swift severity of youth, that knows nothing of the complex trials and sufferings which teach older people to bear and forbear with one another. But when it was over, and she had seen his shocked and bewildered face, all her instinctive trust in him revived, and she would have given anything to be able to make reparation for her cruelty. The whole afternoon she was looking for him, hoping for a chance to show him somehow that she did not altogether "mean it," but, though she saw him several times—eating his lunch with Mrs. Aarons under the refreshment shed close by the Duff-Scott carriage, watching Grand Flâneur win the greatest of his half-dozen successive victories from the same point of view as that taken by the Duff-Scott party—he never turned his head again in her direction or seemed to have the faintest consciousness that she was there.

And next day, when no longer in her glorious apparel, but walking quietly home from the Library with Eleanor, she met him unexpectedly, face to face, in the Fitzroy Gardens. And then he cut her—dead.

[CHAPTER XXIII.]

MR. YELVERTON'S MISSION.

On a Thursday evening in the race week—two days after the "Cup," Mrs. Duff-Scott took her girls to the Town Hall to one of a series of concerts that were given at that time by Henri Ketten, the Hungarian pianist, and the Austrian band that had come out to Melbourne to give éclat to the Exhibition.

It was a fine clear night, and the great hall was full when they arrived, notwithstanding the fact that half-a-dozen theatres were open and displaying their most attractive novelties, for music-loving souls are pretty numerous in this part of the world, taking all things into consideration. Australians may not have such an enlightened appreciation of high-class music as, say, the educated Viennese, who live and breathe and have their being in it. There are, indeed, sad instances on record of a great artist, or a choice combination of artists, having appealed in vain for sympathy to the Melbourne public—that is to say, having found not numbers of paying and applauding listeners, but only a select and fervent few. But such instances are rare, and to be accounted for as the result, not of indifference, but of inexperience. The rule is—as I think most of our distinguished musical visitors will testify—that we are a people peculiarly ready to recognise whatever is good that comes to us, and to acknowledge and appreciate it with ungrudging generosity. And so the Austrian band, though it had many critics, never played to a thin audience or to inattentive ears; and no city in Europe (according to his own death-bed testimony) ever offered such incense of loving enthusiasm to Ketten's genius as burnt steadily in Melbourne from the moment that he laid his fingers on the keyboard, at the Opera House, until he took his reluctant departure. This, I hasten to explain (lest I should be accused of "blowing"), is not due to any exceptional virtue of discrimination on our part, but to our good fortune in having inherited an enterprising and active intelligence from the brave men who had the courage and energy to make a new country, and to that country being such a land of plenty that those who live in it have easy times and abundant leisure to enjoy themselves.

Mrs. Duff-Scott sailed into the hall, with her girls around her, and many eyes were turned to look at them and to watch their progress to their seats. By this time "the pretty Miss Kings" had become well-known and much talked about, and the public interest in what they wore, and what gentlemen were in attendance on them, was apt to be keen on these occasions. To-night the younger girls, with their lovely hair lifted from their white necks and coiled high at the back of their heads, wore picturesque flowered gowns of blue and white stuff, while the elder sister was characteristically dignified in black. And the gentlemen in attendance upon them were Mr. Westmoreland, still devoted to Eleanor, and the portly widower, whom Mrs. Duff-Scott had intended for Elizabeth, but who was perversely addicted to Patty. The little party took their places in the body of the hall, in preference to the gallery, and seated themselves in two rows of three—the widower behind Mrs. Duff-Scott, Patty next him behind Eleanor, and Elizabeth behind Mr. Westmoreland. And when the concert began there was an empty chair beside Elizabeth.

By-and-bye, when the overture was at an end—when the sonorous tinkling and trumpeting of the orchestra had ceased, and she was listening, in soft rapture, to Ketten's delicate improvisation, at once echo and prelude, reminiscent of the idea that the band had been elaborating, and prophetic of the beautiful Beethoven sonata that he was thus tenderly approaching, Elizabeth was aware that the empty chair was taken, and knew, without turning her head, by whom. She tried not to blush and feel fluttered—she was too old, she told herself, for that nonsense—but for half a minute or so it was an effort to control these sentimental tendencies. He laid his light overcoat over the back of his chair, and sat down quietly. Mrs. Duff-Scott looked over her shoulder, and gave him a pleasant nod. Mr. Westmoreland said, "Hullo! Got back again?" And then Elizabeth felt sufficiently composed to turn and hold out her hand, which he took in a strong clasp that was not far removed from a squeeze. They did not speak to each other; nor did they look at each other, though Mr. Yelverton was speedily informed of all the details of his neighbour's appearance, and she took no time to ascertain that he looked particularly handsome in his evening dress (but she always thought him handsome; big nose, leather cheeks, red moustache, and all), and that his well-cut coat and trousers were not in their first freshness. Then the concert went on as before—but not as before—and they sat side by side and listened. Elizabeth's programme lay on her knee, and he took it up to study it, and laid it lightly on her knee again. Presently she pointed to one and another of the selections on the list, about which she had her own strong musical feelings, and he looked down at them and nodded, understanding what she meant. And again they sat back in their chairs, and gazed serenely at the stage under the great organ, at Herr Wildner cutting the air with his baton, or at poor Ketten, with his long, white, solemn face, sitting at the piano in a bower of votive wreaths and bouquets, raining his magic finger-tips like a sparkling cascade upon the keyboard, and wrinkling the skin of his forehead up and down. But they had no audible conversation throughout the whole performance. When, between the two divisions of the programme, the usual interval occurred for the relaxation and refreshment of the performers and their audience, Mr. Westmoreland turned round, with his elbow over the back of his chair, and appropriated an opportunity to which they had secretly been looking forward. "So you've got back?" he remarked for the second time. "I thought you were going to make a round of the country?"

"I shall do it in instalments," replied Mr. Yelverton.

"You won't have time to do much that way, if you are going home again next month. Will you?"

"I can extend my time a little, if necessary."

"Can you? Oh, I thought there was some awfully urgent business that you had to get back for—a new costermonger's theatre to open, or a street Arab's public-house—eh?"

Mr. Westmoreland laughed, as at a good joke that he had got hold of, but Mr. Yelverton was imperturbably grave. "I have business in Australia just now," he said, "and I'm going to finish that first."

Here the portly widower, who had overheard the dialogue, leaned over Patty to join in the conversation. He was a wealthy person of the name of Smith, who, like Mr. Phillips's father in the Undiscovered Country, had been in business "on that obscure line which divides the wholesale merchant's social acceptability from the lost condition of the retail trader," but who, on his retirement with a fortune, had safely scaled the most exclusive heights of respectability. "I say," he called out, addressing Mr. Yelverton, "you're not going to write a book about us, I hope, like Trollope and those fellows? We're suspicious of people who come here utter strangers, and think they can learn all about us in two or three weeks."

Mr. Yelverton reassured him upon this point, and then Mrs. Duff-Scott broke in. "You have not been to call on me yet, Mr. Yelverton."

"No. I hope to have that pleasure to-morrow," he replied. "I am told that Friday is your reception day."

"Oh, you needn't have waited for that. Any day before four. Come to-morrow and dine with us, will you? We are going to have a few friends and a little music in the evening. I suppose you are fond of music—being here."

Mr. Yelverton said he was very fond of music, though he did not understand much about it, and that he would be very happy to dine with her next day. Then, after a little more desultory talk, the orchestra returned to the stage and began the second overture—from Mozart this time—and they all became silent listeners again.

When at last the concert was over, Elizabeth and her "young man" found themselves once more navigating a slow course together through a crowd. Mrs. Duff-Scott, with Mr. Westmoreland and Eleanor, moved off in advance; Mr. Smith offered his arm to Patty and followed; and so, by the favour of fate and circumstances, the remaining pair were left with no choice but to accompany each other. "Wait a moment," said Mr. Yelverton, as she stepped out from her seat, taking her shawl—a soft white Rampore chuddah, that was the fairy godmother's latest gift—from her arms. "You will feel it cold in the passages." She stood still obediently, and he put the shawl over her shoulders and folded one end of it lightly round her throat. Then he held his arm, and her hand was drawn closely to his side; and so they set forth towards the door, having put a dozen yards between themselves and the rest of their party.

"You are living with Mrs. Duff-Scott, are you not?" he asked abruptly.

"Not quite that," she replied. "Mrs. Duff-Scott would like us to be there always, but we think it better to be at home sometimes."

"Yes—I should think it is better," he replied.

"But we are with her very often—nearly every day," she added.

"Shall you be there to-morrow?" he asked, not looking at her. "Shall I see you there in the evening?"

"I think so," she replied rather unsteadily. And, after a little while, she felt emboldened to ask a few questions of him. "Are you really only making a flying visit to Australia, Mr. Yelverton?"

"I had intended that it should be very short," he said; "but I shall not go away quite yet."

"You have many interests at home—to call you back?" she ventured to say, with a little timidity about touching on his private affairs.

"Yes. You are thinking of what Westmoreland said? He is a scoffer—he doesn't understand. You mustn't mind what he says. But I should like," he added, as they drew near the door and saw Mrs. Duff-Scott looking back for them, "I should very much like to tell you something about it myself. I think—I feel sure—it would interest you. Perhaps I may have an opportunity to-morrow night."

Here Mrs. Duff-Scott's emissary, Mr. Smith, who had been sent back to his duty, claimed Elizabeth on her chaperon's behalf. She and her lover had no time to say anything more, except good-night. But that good-night—and their anticipations—satisfied them.

On reaching Mrs. Duff-Scott's house, where the girls were to sleep, they found the major awaiting their return, and were hospitably invited—along with Mr. Westmoreland, who had been allowed to "see them safely home," on the box-seat of the carriage—into the library, where they found a bright little fire in the grate, and refreshments on the table. The little man, apparently, was as paternal in his dispositions towards the orphans as his wife could desire, and was becoming quite weaned from his bad club habits under the influence of his new domestic ties.

"Dear me, how nice!—how comfortable!" exclaimed Mrs. Duff-Scott, sailing up to the hearth and seating herself in a deep leather chair. "Come in, Mr. Westmoreland. Come along to the fire, dears." And she called her brood around her. Eleanor, who had caressing ways, knelt down at her chaperon's feet on the soft oriental carpet, and she pulled out the frills of lace round the girl's white neck and elbows with a motherly gesture.

"Dear child!" she ejaculated fondly, "doesn't she"—appealing to her husband—"remind you exactly of a bit of fifteenth century Nankin?"

"I should like to see the bit of porcelain, Nankin or otherwise, that would remind me exactly of Miss Nelly," replied the gallant major, bowing to the kneeling girl. "I would buy that bit, whatever price it was."

"That's supposing you could get it," interrupted Mr. Westmoreland, with a laugh.

"It is the very shade of blue, with that grey tinge in it," murmured Mrs. Duff-Scott. But at the same time she was thinking of a new topic. "I have asked Mr. Yelverton to dine with us to-morrow, my dear," she remarked, suddenly, to her spouse. "We wanted another man to make up our number."

"Oh, have you? All right. I shall be very glad to see him. He's a gentlemanly fellow, is Yelverton. Very rich, too, they tell me. But we don't see much of him."

"No," said Mr. Westmoreland, withdrawing his eyes from the contemplation of Eleanor and her æsthetic gown, "he's not a society man. He don't go much into clubs, Yelverton. He's one of the richest commoners in Great Britain—give you my word, sir, he's got a princely fortune, all to his own cheek—and he lets his places and lives in chambers in Piccadilly, and spends nearly all his time when he's at home in the slums and gutters of Whitechapel. He's got a mania for philanthropy, unfortunately. It's an awful pity, for he really would be a good fellow."

At the word "philanthropy," the major made a clandestine grimace to Elizabeth, but composed his face immediately, seeing that she was not regarding him, but gazing with serious eyes at the narrator of Mr. Yelverton's peculiarities.

"He's been poking into every hole and corner," continued Mr. Westmoreland, "since he came here, overhauling the factory places, and finding out the prices of things, and the land regulations, and I don't know what. He's just been to Sandhurst, to look at the mines—doing a little amateur emigration business, I expect. Seems a strange thing," concluded the young man, thoughtfully, "for a rich swell of his class to be bothering himself about things of that sort."

Mrs. Duff-Scott had been listening attentively, and at this she roused herself and sat up in her chair. "It is the rich who should do it," said she, with energy. "And I admire him—I admire him, that he has given up his own selfish ease to help those whose lives are hard and miserable. I believe the squalid wretchedness of places like Whitechapel—though I have never been there—is something dreadful—dreadful! I admire him," she repeated defiantly. "I think it's a pity a few more of us are not like him. I shall talk to him about it. I—I shall see if I can't help him."

This time Elizabeth did look at the major, who was making a feint of putting his handkerchief to his eyes. She smiled at him sweetly, and then she walked over to Mrs. Duff-Scott, put her strong arms round the matron's shoulders, and kissed her fervently.

[CHAPTER XXIV.]

AN OLD STORY.

Mrs. Duff-Scott's drawing-room, at nine or ten o'clock on Friday evening, was a pleasant sight. Very spacious, very voluptuous, in a subdued, majestic, high-toned way; very dim—with splashes of richness—as to walls and ceilings; very glowing and splendid—with folds of velvety darkness—as to window curtains and portières. The colouring of it was such as required a strong light to show how beautiful it was, but with a proud reserve, and to mark its unostentatious superiority over the glittering salons of the uneducated nouveaux riches, it was always more or less in a warm and mellow twilight, veiling its sombre magnificence from the vulgar eye. Just now its main compartment was lit by wax candles in archaic candlesticks amongst the flowers and bric-à-brac of an étagère over the mantelpiece, and by seven shaded and coloured lamps, of various artistic devices, judiciously distributed over the abundant table-space so as to suffuse with a soft illumination the occupants of most of the wonderfully stuffed and rotund chairs and lounges grouped about the floor; and yet the side of the room was decidedly bad for reading in. "It does not light up well," was the consolation of women of Mrs. Duff-Scott's acquaintance, who still clung to pale walls and primary colours and cut-glass chandeliers, either from necessity or choice. "Pooh!" Mrs. Duff-Scott used to retort, hearing of this just criticism; "as if I wanted it to light up!" But she had compromised with her principles in the arrangement of the smaller division of the room, where, between and beyond a pair of vaguely tinted portières, stood the piano, and all other material appliances for heightening the spiritual enjoyment of musical people. Here she had grudgingly retained the gas-burner of utilitarian Philistinism. It hung down from the ceiling straight over the piano, a circlet of gaudy yellow flames, that made the face of every plaque upon the wall to glitter. But the brilliant corona was borne in no gas-fitter's vehicle; its shrine was of dull brass, mediæval and precious, said to have been manufactured, in the first instance, for either papal or imperial purposes—it didn't matter which.

In this bright music-room was gathered to-night a little company of the elect—Herr Wüllner and his violin, together with three other stringed instruments and their human complement. Patty at the piano, Eleanor, Mrs. Duff-Scott, and half-a-dozen more enthusiasts—with a mixed audience around them. In the dim, big room beyond, the major entertained the inartistic, outlawed few who did not care, nor pretend to care, for aught but the sensual comfort of downy chairs and after dinner chit-chat. And, at the farthest end, in a recess of curtained window that had no lamps about it, sat Elizabeth and Mr. Yelverton, side by side, on a low settee—not indifferent to the pathetic wail of the far-distant violins, but finding more entertainment in their own talk than the finest music could have afforded them.

"I had a friend who gave up everything to go and work amongst the London poor—in the usual clerical way, you know, with schools and guilds and all the right and proper things. He used to ask me for money, and insist on my helping him with a lecture or a reading now and then, and I got drawn in. I had always had an idea of doing something—taking a line of some sort—and somehow this got hold of me. I couldn't see all that misery—you've no idea of it, Miss King—"

"I have read of it," she said.

"You would have to see it to realise it in the least. After I saw it I couldn't turn my back and go home and enjoy myself as if nothing had happened. And I had no family to consider. I got drawn in."

"And that is your work?" said Elizabeth. "I knew it."

"No. My friend talks of 'his work'—a lot of them have 'their work'—it's splendid, too—but they don't allow me to use that word, and I don't want it. What I do is all wrong, they say—not only useless, but mischievous."

"I don't believe it," said Elizabeth.

"Nor I, of course—though they may be right. We can only judge according to our lights. To me, it seems that when things are as bad as possible, a well meaning person can't make them worse and may make them better. They say 'no,' and argue it all out as plainly as possible. Yet I stick to my view—I go on in my own line. It doesn't interfere with theirs, though they say it does."

"And what is it?" she asked, with her sympathetic eyes.

"Well, you'll hardly understand, for you don't know the class—the lowest deep of all—those who can't be dealt with by the Societies—the poor wretches whom nothing will raise, and who are abandoned as hopeless, outside the pale of everything. They are my line."

"Can there be any abandoned as hopeless?"

"Yes. They really are so, you know. Neither religion nor political economy can do anything for them, though efforts are made for the children. Poor, sodden, senseless, vicious lumps of misery, with the last spark of soul bred out of them—a sort of animated garbage that cumbers the ground and makes the air stink—given up as a bad job, and only wanted out of the way—from the first they were on my mind more than all the others. And when I saw them left to rot like that, I felt I might have a free hand."

"And can you succeed where so many have failed?"

"Oh, what I do doesn't involve success or failure. It's outside all that, just as they are. They're only brutes in human shape—hardly human shape either; but I have a feeling for brutes. I love horses and dogs—I can't bear to see things suffer. So that's all I do—just comfort them where I can, in their own way; not the parson's way—that's no use. I wouldn't mock them by speaking of religion—I suppose religion, as we know it, has had a large hand in making them what they are; and to go and tell them that God ordained their miserable pariah-dog lot would be rank blasphemy. I leave all that. I don't bother about their souls, because I know they haven't got any; I see their wretched bodies, and that's enough for me. It's something not to let them go out of the world without ever knowing what it is to be physically comfortable. It eases my conscience, as a man who has never been hungry, except for the pleasure of it."

"And do they blame you for that?"

"They say I pauperise them and demoralise them," he answered, with a sudden laugh; "that I disorganise the schemes of the legitimate workers—that I outrage every principle of political economy. Well, I do that, certainly. But that I make things worse—that I retard the legitimate workers—I won't believe. If I do," he concluded, "I can't help it."

"No," breathed Elizabeth, softly.

"There's only one thing in which I and the legitimate workers are alike—everybody is alike in that, I suppose—the want of money. Only in the matter of beer and tobacco, what interest I could get on a few hundred pounds! What I could do in the way of filling empty stomachs and easing aches and pains if I had control of large means! What a good word 'means' is, isn't it? We want 'means' for all the ends we seek—no matter what they are."

"I thought," said Elizabeth, "that you were rich. Mr. Westmoreland told us so."

"Well, in a way, I am," he rejoined. "I hold large estates in my own name, and can draw fifty or sixty thousand a year interest from them if I like. But there have been events—there are peculiar circumstances in connection with the inheritance of the property, which make me feel myself not quite entitled to use it freely—not yet. I will use it, after this year, if nothing happens. I think I ought to; but I have put it off hitherto so as to make as sure as possible that I was lawfully in possession. I will tell you how it is," he proceeded, leaning forward and clasping his knee with his big brown hands. "I am used to speaking of the main facts freely, because I am always in hopes of discovering something as I go about the world. A good many years ago my father's second brother disappeared, and was never heard of afterwards. He and the eldest brother, at that time the head of the family, and in possession of the property, quarrelled about—well, about a woman whom both were in love with; and the elder one was found dead—shot dead—in a plantation not far from the house on the evening of the day of the quarrel, an hour after the total disappearance of the other. My uncle Kingscote—I was named after him, and he was my godfather—was last seen going out towards the plantation with his gun; he was traced to London within the next few days; and it was almost—but just not quite certainly—proved that he had there gone on board a ship that sailed for South America and was lost. He was advertised for in every respectable newspaper in the world, at intervals, for twenty years afterwards—during which time the estate was in Chancery, before they would grant it to my father, from whom it descended to me—and I should think the agony columns of all countries never had one message cast into such various shapes. But he never gave a sign. All sorts of apparent clues were followed up, but they led to nothing. If alive he must have known that it was all right, and would have come home to take his property. He must have gone down in that ship."

"But—oh, surely he would never have come back to take the property of a murdered brother!" exclaimed Elizabeth, in a shocked voice.

"His brother was not murdered," Mr. Yelverton replied. "Many people thought so, of course—people have a way of thinking the worst in these cases, not from malice, but because it is more interesting—and a tradition to that effect survives still, I am afraid. But my uncle's family never suspected him of such a crime. The thing was not legally proved, one way or the other. There were strong indications in the position of the gun which lay by his side, and in the general appearance of the spot where he was found, that my uncle, Patrick Yelverton, accidentally shot himself; that was the opinion of the coroner's jury, and the conviction of the family. But poor Kingscote evidently assumed that he would be accused of murder. Perhaps—it is very possible—some rough-tempered action of his might have caused the catastrophe, and his remorse have had the same effect as fear in prompting him to efface himself. Anyway, no one who knew him well believed him capable of doing his brother a mischief wilfully. His innocence was, indeed, proved by the fact that he married the lady who had been at the bottom of the trouble—by no fault of hers, poor soul!—after he escaped to London; and, wherever he went to, he took her with him. She disappeared a few days after he did, and was lost as completely, from that time. The record and circumstances of their marriage were discovered; and that was all. He would not have married her—she would not have married him—had he been a murderer."

"Do you think not?" said Elizabeth. "That is always assumed as a matter of course, in books—that murder and—and other disgraces are irrevocable barriers between those who love each other, when they discover them. But I do not understand why. With such an awful misery to bear, they would want all that their love could give them so much more—not less."

"You see," said Mr. Yelverton, regarding her with great interest, "it is a sort of point of honour with the one in misfortune not to drag the other down. When we are married, as when we are dead, 'it is for a long time.'"

Elizabeth made no answer, but there was a quiet smile about her lips that plainly testified to her want of sympathy with this view. After a silence of a few seconds, her companion leaned forward and looked directly into her face. "Would you stick to the man you loved if he had forfeited his good name or were in risk of the gallows?—I mean if he were really a criminal, and not only a suspected one?" he asked with impressive slowness.

"If I had found him worthy to be loved before that," she replied, speaking collectedly, but dismayed to find herself growing crimson, "and if he cared for me—and leant on me—oh, yes! It might be wrong, but I should do it. Surely any woman would. I don't see how she could help herself."

He changed his position, and looked away from her face into the room with a light in his deep-set eyes. "You ought to have been Elizabeth Leigh's daughter," he said. "I did not think there were any more women like her in the world."

"I am like other women," said Elizabeth, humbly, "only more ignorant."

He made no comment—they both found it rather difficult to speak at this point—and, after an expressive pause, she went on, rather hurriedly, "Was Elizabeth Leigh the lady who married your uncle?"

"Yes," he replied, bringing himself back to his story with an effort, "she was. She was a lovely woman, bright and clever, fond of dress and fun and admiration, like other women; but with a solid foundation to her character that you will forgive my saying is rare to your sex—as far, at least, as I am able to judge. I saw her when I was a little schoolboy, but I can picture her now, as if it were but yesterday. What vigour she had! What a wholesome zest for life! And yet she gave up everything to go into exile and obscurity with the man she loved. Ah, what a woman! She ought not to have died. She should have lived and reigned at Yelverton, and had a houseful of children. It is still possible—barely, barely possible—that she did live, and that I shall some day stumble over a handsome young cousin who will tell me that he is the head of the family."

"O no," said Elizabeth, "not after all these years. Give up thinking of such a thing. Take your own money now, as soon as you go home, and"—looking up with a smile—"buy all the beer and tobacco that you want."

[CHAPTER XXV.]

OUT IN THE COLD.

Paul Brion, meanwhile, plodded on in his old groove, which no longer fitted him as it used to do, and vexed the soul of his benevolent landlady with the unprecedented shortness of his temper. She didn't know how to take him, she said, he was that cantankerous and "contrairy:" but she triumphantly recognised the result that she had all along expected would follow a long course of turning night into day, and therefore was not surprised at the change in him. "Your brain is over-wrought," she said, soothingly, when one day a compunctious spirit moved him to apologise for his moroseness; "your nervous system is unstrung. You've been going on too long, and you want a spell. You just take a holiday straight off, and go right away, and don't look at an ink-bottle for a month. It will save you a brain fever, mark my words." But Paul was consistent in his perversity, and refused to take good advice. He did think, for a moment, that he might as well have a little run and see how his father was getting on; and for several days he entertained the more serious project of "cutting" the colony altogether and going to seek his fortune in London. All the same, he stayed on with Mrs. M'Intyre, producing his weekly tale of political articles and promiscuous essays, and sitting up all night, and sleeping all the morning, with his habitual irregular regularity. But the flavour had gone out of work and recreation alike, and not all Mrs. Aarons's blandishments, which were now exercised upon him for an hour or two every Friday evening, were of any avail to coax it back again. Those three Miss Kings, whom his father had sent to him, and whom Mrs. Duff-Scott had taken away from him, had spoiled the taste of life. That was the fact, though he would not own it. "What care I? They are nothing to me," he used to say to himself when fighting an occasional spasm of rage or jealousy. He really persuaded himself very often that they were nothing to him, and that his bitter feeling was caused solely by the spectacle of their deterioration. To see them exchanging all their great plans and high aspirations for these vulgar social triumphs—giving up their studies at the Library to attend dancing classes, and to dawdle about the Block, and gossip in the Exhibition—laying aside their high-bred independence to accept the patronage of a fine lady who might drop them as suddenly as she took them up—was it not enough to make a man's heart bleed?

As for Patty, he made up his mind that he could never forgive her. Now and then he would steal out upon his balcony to listen to a Schubert serenade or a Beethoven sonata in the tender stillness of a summer night, and then he would have that sensation of bleeding at the heart which melted, and unnerved, and unmanned him; but, for the most part, every sight and sound and reminiscence of her were so many fiery styptics applied to his wound, scorching up all tender emotions in one great angry pain. Outwardly he shunned her, cut her—withered her up, indeed—with his ostentatiously expressed indifference; but secretly he spent hours of the day and night dogging her from place to place, when he ought to have been at work or in his bed, merely that he might get a glimpse of her in a crowd, and some notion of what she was doing. He haunted the Exhibition with the same disregard for the legitimate attractions of that social head-centre as prevailed with the majority of its visitors, to whom it was a daily trysting-place; and there he had the doubtful satisfaction of seeing her every now and then. Once she was in the Indian Court, so fragrant with sandalwood, and she was looking with ardent eyes at gossamer muslins and embroidered cashmeres, while young Westmoreland leaned on the glass case beside her in an attitude of insufferable familiarity. It was an indication, to the jealous lover, that the woman who had elevated her sex from the rather low place that it had held in his estimation before he knew her, and made it sacred to him for her sake, was, after all, "no better than the rest of them." He had dreamed of her as a man's true helpmate and companion, able to walk hand in hand with him on the high roads of human progress, and finding her vocation and her happiness in that spiritual and intellectual fellowship; and here she was lost in the greedy contemplation of a bit of fine embroidery that had cost some poor creature his eyesight already, and was presently to cost again what would perhaps provision a starving family for a twelvemonth—just like any other ignorant and frivolous female who had sold her soul to the demon of fashion. He marched home to Myrtle Street with the zeal of the reformer (which draws its inspiration from such unsuspected sources) red-hot in his busy brain. He lit his pipe, spread out his paper, dipped his pen in the ink-bottle, and began to deal with the question of "Woman's Clothes in Relation to her Moral and Intellectual Development" in what he conceived to be a thoroughly impersonal and benevolent temper. His words should be brief, he said to himself, but they should be pregnant with suggestive truth. He would lay a light touch upon this great sore that had eaten so deeply into one member of the body politic, causing all the members to suffer with it; but he would diagnose it faithfully, without fear or favour, and show wherein it had hindered the natural advancement of the race, and to what fatal issues its unchecked development tended. It was a serious matter, that had too long been left unnoticed by the leaders of the thought of the day. "It is a problem," he wrote, with a splutter of his pen, charging his grievance full tilt with his most effective term; "it is, we conscientiously believe, one of the great problems of this problem-haunted and problem-fighting age—one of the wrongs that it is the mission of the reforming Modern Spirit to set right—though the subject is so inextricably entangled and wrapped up in its amusing associations that at present its naked gravity is only recognised by the philosophic few. It is all very well to make fun of it; and, indeed, it is a very good thing to make fun of it—for every reform must have a beginning, and there is no better weapon than just and judicious ridicule wherewith Reason can open her attack upon the solid and solemn front of time-honoured Prejudice. The heavy artillery of argument has no effect until the enemy has contracted an internal weakness by being made to imbibe the idea that he is absurd. A little wit, in the early stage of the campaign, is worth a deal of logic. But still there it stands—this great, relentless, crushing, cruel CUSTOM (which requires capital letters to emphasise it suitably)—and there are moments when we can't be witty about it—when our hearts burn within us at the spectacle of our human counterpart still, with a few bright exceptions, in the stage of intellectual childhood, while we fight the battle of the world's progress alone—"

Here the typical strong-minded female, against whom he had fulminated in frequent wrath, suddenly appeared before him, side by side with a vision of Patty in her shell-pink Cup dress; and his sword arm failed him. He paused, and laid down his pen, and leaned his head on his hand; and he was thereupon seized with a raging desire to be rich, in order that he might buy Indian embroideries for his beloved, and clothe her like a king's daughter in glorious apparel. Somehow that remarkable paper which was to inaugurate so vast a revolution in the social system never got written. At least, it did not for two or three years, and then it came forth in so mild a form that its original design was unrecognisable. (N.B.—In this latest contribution to the Dress Reform Question, women, to the peril of their immortal intellects, were invited to make themselves as pretty as they could, no hard condition being laid upon them, save that they should try to dress to please the eyes of men instead of to rival and outshine each other—that they should cultivate such sense of art and reason as might happily have survived in them—and, above all, from the high principles of religion and philanthropy, that they should abstain from bringing in new fashions violently—or, indeed, at all—leaving the spirit of beauty and the spirit of usefulness to produce their healthy offspring by the natural processes. In the composition of this paper he had the great advantage of being able to study both his own and the woman's point of view.)

The next day he went to the Exhibition again, and again he saw Patty, with no happier result than before. She was standing amongst the carriages with Mr. Smith—popularly believed to have been for years on the look-out for a pretty young second wife—who was pointing out to her the charms of a seductive little lady's phaeton, painted lake and lined with claret, with a little "dickey" for a groom behind; no doubt tempting her with the idea of driving such a one of her own some day. This was even more bitter to Paul than the former encounter. He could bear with Mr. Westmoreland, whose youth entitled him to place himself somewhat on an equality with her, and whom, moreover, his rival (as he thought himself) secretly regarded as beneath contempt; but this grey-bearded widower, whose defunct wife might almost have been her grandmother, Paul felt he could not bear, in any sort of conjunction with his maiden queen, who, though in such dire disgrace, was his queen always. He went hastily away that he might not see them together, and get bad thoughts into his head—such as, for instance, that Patty might be contemplating the incredible degradation of matrimony with the widower, in order to be able to drive the prettiest pony carriage in town.

He went away, but he came back again in a day or two. And then he saw her standing in the nave, with Mr. Smith again, looking at Kate Kelly, newly robed in black, and prancing up and down, in flowing hair and three-inch veil, and high heels and furbelows, putting on all sorts of airs and graces because, a few hours before, Ned had crowned his exploits and added a new distinction to the family by being hung in gaol; and she (Patty) could not only bear that shabby and shameless spectacle, but was even listening while Mr. Smith cut jokes about it—this pitiful demolishment of our imagined Kate Kelly, our Grizell Hume of the bush—and smiling at his misplaced humour. The fact being that poor Patty was aware of her lover's proximity, and was moved to unnatural and hysteric mirth in order that he might not carry away the mistaken notion that she was fretting for him. But Paul, who could see no further through a stone wall than other men, was profoundly shocked and disgusted.

And yet once more he saw his beloved, whom he tried so hard to hate. On the night of the 17th—a Wednesday night—he had yawned through an uninteresting, and to him unprofitable, session of the Assembly, dealing with such mere practical matters as the passing in committee of clauses of railway bills and rabbit bills, which neither enlivened the spirits and speeches of honourable members nor left a press critic anything in particular to criticise; and at a few minutes after midnight he was sauntering through the streets to his office, and chanced to pass the Town Hall, where the great ball of the Exhibition year was going on. It was not chance, perhaps, that led him that way—along by the chief entrance, round which carriages and cabs were standing in a dense black mass, and where even the pavements were too much crowded by loiterers to be comfortable to the pedestrian abroad on business. But it was chance that gave him a glimpse of Patty at the only moment of the night when he could have seen her. As he went by he looked up at the lighted vestibule with a sneer. He was not himself of the class which went to balls of that description—he honestly believed he had no desire to be, and that, as a worker for his bread, endowed with brains instead of money, he was at an infinite advantage over those who did; but he knew that the three Miss Kings would be numbered with the elect. He pictured Patty in gorgeous array, bare-necked and bare-armed, displaying her dancing-class acquirements for the edification of the gilded youth of the Melbourne Club, whirling round and round, with flushed cheeks and flying draperies, in the arms of young Westmoreland and his brother hosts, intoxicated with flattery and unwholesome excitement, and he made up his mind that she was only beginning the orgy of the night, and might be expected to trail home, dishevelled, when the stars grew pale in the summer dawn. However, as this surmise occurred to him it was dispelled by the vision of Mrs. Duff-Scott coming out of the light and descending the flight of steps in front of him. He recognised her majestic figure in spite of its wraps, and the sound of her voice directing the major to call the carriage up. She had a regal—or, I should rather say, vice-regal—habit of leaving a ball-room early (generally after having been amongst the first to be taken to supper), as he might have known had he known a little more about her. It was one of the trivial little customs that indicated her rank. Paul looked up at her for a moment, to make sure that she had all her party with her; and then he drew into the shadow of a group of bystanders to watch them drive off.

First came the chaperon herself, with Eleanor leaning lightly on her arm, and a couple of hosts in attendance. Eleanor was not bare-armed and necked, nor was she dishevelled; she had just refreshed herself with chicken and champagne, and was looking as composed and fair and refined as possible in her delicate white gown and unruffled yellow hair—like a tall lily, I feel I ought (and for a moment was tempted) to add, only that I know no girl ever did look like a lily since the world was made, nor ever will, no matter what the processes of evolution may come to. This pair, or quartette, were followed by Elizabeth, escorted on one side by the little major and on the other by big Mr. Yelverton. She, too, had neither tumbled draperies nor towsled head, but looked serene and dignified as usual, holding a bouquet to her breast with the one hand, and with the other thriftily guarding her skirts from contact with the pavement. But Mr. Brion took no notice of her. His attention was concentrated on his Patty, who appeared last of all, under the charge of that ubiquitous widower (whom he was beginning to hate with a deadly hatred), Mr. Smith. She was as beautiful as—whatever classical or horticultural object the reader likes to imagine—in the uncertain light and in her jealous lover's estimation, when she chanced, after stepping down to his level, to stand within a couple of yards of him to wait for the carriage. No bronze, or dead leaf, or half-ripe chestnut (to which I inadvertently likened it) was fit to be named in the same breath with that wavy hair that he could almost touch, and not all the jewellers' shops in Melbourne could have furnished a comparison worthy of her lovely eyes. She, too, was dressed in snowy, foamy, feathery white (I use these adjectives in deference to immemorial custom, and not because they accurately describe the finer qualities of Indian muslin and Mechlin lace), ruffled round her white throat and elbows in the most delicately modest fashion; and not a scrap of precious stone or metal was to be seen anywhere to vulgarise the maidenly simplicity of her attire. He had never seen her look so charming—he had never given himself so entirely to the influence of her beauty. And she stood there, so close that he could see the rise and fall of the laces on her breast with her gentle breathing, silent and patient, paying no attention to the blandishments of her cavalier, looking tired and pre-occupied, and as far as possible from the condition in which he had pictured her. Yet, when presently he emerged from his obscurity, and strode away, he felt that he had never been in such a rage of wrath against her. And why, may it be asked? What had poor Patty done this time? She had not known that he was there beside her. It was the greatest offence of all that she had committed, and the culmination of his wrongs.

[CHAPTER XXVI.]

WHAT PAUL COULD NOT KNOW.

It was a pity that Paul Brion, looking at Patty's charming figure in the gaslight, could not have looked into her heart. It is a pity, for us all, that there is no Palace of Truth amongst our sacred edifices, into which we could go—say, once a week—and show ourselves as we are to our neighbours and ourselves. If we could know our friends from our enemies, whom to trust and whom to shun—if we could vindicate ourselves from the false testimony of appearances in the eyes of those whom we love and by whom we desire to be loved—not to speak of larger privileges—what a different world it would be! But we can't, unfortunately. And so Paul carried away with him the impression that his Patty had become a fine lady—too fine to have any longer a thought for him—than which he had never conceived a baser calumny in his life.

Nor was he the only one who misread her superficial aspect that night. Mrs. Duff-Scott, the most discerning of women, had a fixed belief that her girls, all of them, thoroughly enjoyed their first ball. From the moment that they entered the room, a few minutes in advance of the Governor's party, received by a dozen or two of hosts drawn up in line on either side of the doorway, it was patent to her that they would do her every sort of credit; and this anticipation, at any rate, was abundantly realised. For the greater part of the evening she herself was enthroned under the gallery, which roofed a series of small drawing-rooms on this occasion, eminently adapted to matronly requirements; and from her arm-chair or sofa corner she looked out through curtains of æsthetic hues upon the pretty scene which had almost as fresh an interest for her to-night as it had for them. And no mother could have been more proud than she when one or other was taken from her side by the most eligible and satisfactory partners, or when for brief minutes they came back to her and gave her an opportunity to pull out a fold or a frill that had become disarranged, or when at intervals during their absence she caught sight of them amongst the throng, looking so distinguished in their expensively simple toilettes—those unpretending white muslins upon which she had not hesitated to spend the price of her own black velvet and Venetian point, whereof the costly richness was obvious to the least instructed observer—and evidently receiving as much homage and attention as they well knew what to do with. Now it was Eleanor going by on the arm of a naval foreigner, to whom she was chatting in that pure German (or equally pure French) that was one of her unaccountable accomplishments, or dancing as if she had danced from childhood with a more important somebody else. Now it was Patty, sitting bowered in azaleas on the steps under the great organ, while the Austrian band (bowered almost out of sight) discoursed Strauss waltzes over her head, and Mr. Smith sat in a significant attitude on the crimson carpet at her feet. And again it was Elizabeth, up in the gallery, which was a forest of fern trees to-night, sitting under the shade of the great green fronds with Mr. Yelverton, who had such an evident partiality for her society. Strange to say, Mrs. Duff-Scott, acute as she was in such matters, had never thought of Mr. Yelverton as a possible husband, and did not so think of him now—while noting his proceedings. She was taking so deep an interest in him as a philanthropist and social philosopher that she forgot he might have other and less exceptional characteristics; and she left off scheming for Elizabeth when Mr. Smith made choice of Patty, and was fully occupied in her manoeuvres and anxieties for the welfare of the younger sisters. That Patty should be the second Mrs. Smith she had quite made up her mind, and that Eleanor should be Mrs. Westmoreland was equally a settled thing. With these two affairs approaching a crisis together, she had quite enough to think of; and, with the prospect of losing two of her children so soon after becoming possessed of them, she was naturally in no hurry to deprive herself of the third. She was beginning to regard Elizabeth as destined to be her surviving comfort when the others were gone, and therefore abandoned all matrimonial projects on her behalf. Concerning Patty, the fairy godmother felt that her mind was at rest; half-a-dozen times in an hour and a half did she see the girl in some sort of association with Mr. Smith—who finally took her in to supper, and from supper to the cloak-room and carriage. For her she had reached the question of the trousseau and whom she would invite for bridesmaids. About Eleanor she was not so easy. It did not seem that Mr. Westmoreland lived up to his privileges; he did not dance with her at all, and was remarkably attentive to a plain heiress in a vulgar satin gown and diamonds. However, that was nothing. The bachelors of the club had all the roomful to entertain, and were obliged to lay aside their private preferences for the occasion. He had made his attentions to Eleanor so conspicuous that his proposal was only required as a matter of form; and Mrs. Duff-Scott felt that she would rather get the fuss of one engagement over before another came on. So, when the dissipations of the night were past, she retired from the field with a pleasant sense of almost unalloyed success, and fondly believed that her pretty protégées were as satisfied with the situation as she was.

But she was wrong. She was mistaken about them all—and most of all about Patty. When she first came into the room, and the fairy-land effect of the decorations burst upon her—when she passed up the lane of bachelor hosts, running the gauntlet of their respectful but admiring observation, like a young queen receiving homage—when the little major took her for a slow promenade round the hall and made her pause for a moment in front of one of the great mirrors that flanked the flowery orchestra, to show her herself in full length and in the most charming relief against her brilliant surroundings—the girl certainly did enjoy herself in a manner that bordered closely upon intoxication. She said very little, but her eyes were radiant and her whole face and figure rapturous, all her delicate soul spread out like a flower opened to the sunshine under the sensuous and artistic influences thus suddenly poured upon her. And then, after an interval of vague wonder as to what it was that was missing from the completeness of her pleasure—what it was that, being absent, spoiled the flavour of it all—there came an overpowering longing for her lover's presence and companionship, that lover without whom few balls are worth the trouble of dressing for, unless I am much mistaken. And after she found out that she wanted Paul Brion, who was not there, her gaiety became an excited restlessness, and her enjoyment of the pretty scene around her changed to passionate discontent. Why was he not there? She curled her lip in indignant scorn. Because he was poor, and a worker for his bread, and therefore was not accounted the equal of Mr. Westmoreland and Mr. Smith. She was too young and ardent to take into account the multitudes of other reasons which entirely removed it from the sphere of social grievances; like many another woman, she could see only one side of a subject at a time, and looked at that through a telescope. It seemed to her a despicably vulgar thing, and an indication of the utter rottenness of the whole fabric of society, that a high-born man of distinguished attainments should by common consent be neglected and despised simply because he was not rich. That was how she looked at it. And if Paul Brion had not been thought good enough for a select assembly, why had she been invited? Her answer to this question was a still more painful testimony to the generally improper state of things, and brought her to long for her own legitimate and humble environment, in which she could enjoy her independence and self-respect, and (which was the idea that tantalised her most just now) solace her lover with Beethoven sonatas when he was tired of writing, and wanted a rest. From the longing to see him in the ballroom, to have him with her as other girls had their natural counterparts, to share with her in the various delights of this great occasion, she fell to longing to go home to him—to belong to Myrtle Street and obscurity again, just as he did, and because he did. Why should she be listening to the Austrian band, eating ices and strawberries, rustling to and fro amongst the flowers and fine ladies, flaunting herself in this dazzling crowd of rich and idle people, while he plodded at his desk or smoked a lonely pipe on his balcony, out of it all, and with nothing to cheer him? Then the memory of their estrangement, and how it had come about, and how little chance there seemed now of any return to old relations and those blessed opportunities that she had so perversely thrown away, wrought upon her high-strung nerves, and inspired her with a kind of heroism of despair. Poor, thin-skinned Patty! She was sensitive to circumstances to a degree that almost merited the term "morbid," which is so convenient as a description of people of that sort. A ray of sunshine would light up the whole world, and show her her own pathway in it, shining into the farthest future with a divine effulgence of happiness and success; and the patter of rain upon the window on a dark day could beat down hope and discourage effort as effectually as if its natural mission were to bring misfortune. At one moment she would be inflated with a proud belief in herself and her own value and dignity, that gave her the strength of a giant to be and do and suffer; and then, at some little touch of failure, some discovery that she was mortal and a woman liable to blunder, as were other women, she would collapse into nothing and fling herself into the abysses of shame and self-condemnation as a worthless and useless thing. When this happened, her only chance of rescue and restoration in her own esteem was to do penance in some striking shape—to prove herself to herself as having some genuineness of moral substance in her, though it were only to own honestly how little it was. It was above all things necessary to her to have her own good opinion; what others thought of her was comparatively of no consequence.

She had been dancing for some time before the intercourse with Mr. Smith, that so gratified Mrs. Duff-Scott, set in. The portly widower found her fanning herself on a sofa in the neighbourhood of her chaperon, for the moment unattended by cavaliers; and, approaching her with one of the frequent little plates and spoons that were handed about, invited her favour through the medium of three colossal strawberries veiled in sugar and cream.

"I am so grieved that I am not a dancing man," he sighed as she refused his offering on the ground that she had already eaten strawberries twice; "I would ask leave to inscribe my humble name on your programme, Miss Patty."

"I don't see anything to grieve about," she replied, "in not being a dancing man. I am sure I don't want to dance. And you may inscribe your name on my programme and welcome"—holding it out to him. "It will keep other people from doing it."

The delighted old fellow felt that this was indeed meeting him half way, and he put his name down for all the available round dances that were to take place before morning, with her free permission. Then, as the band struck up for the first of them, and the people about them began to crystallise into pairs and groups, and the smart man-o'-wars men stretched their crimson rope across the hall to divide the crowd, Mr. Smith took his young lady on his arm and went off to enjoy himself. First to the buffet, crowned with noble icebergs to cool the air, and groaning with such miscellaneous refreshment that supper, in its due course, came to her as a surprise and a superfluity, where he insisted that she should support her much-tried strength (as he did his own) with a sandwich and champagne. Then up a narrow staircase to the groves above—where already sat Elizabeth in a distant and secluded bower with Mr. Yelverton, lost, apparently, to all that went on around her. Here Mr. Smith took a front seat, that the young men might see and envy him, and set himself to the improvement of his opportunity.

"And so you don't care about dancing," he remarked tenderly; "you, with these little fairy feet! I wonder why that is?"

"Because I am not used to it," said Patty, leaning her white arms on the ledge in front of her and looking down at the shining sea of heads below. "I have been brought up to other accomplishments."

"Music," he murmured; "and—and—"

"And scrubbing and sweeping, and washing and ironing, and churning and bread-making, and cleaning dirty pots and kettles," said Patty, with elaborate distinctness.

"Ha-ha!" chuckled Mr. Smith. "I should like to see you cleaning pots and kettles! Cinderella after twelve o'clock, eh?"

"Yes," said she; "you have expressed it exactly. After twelve o'clock—what time is it now?—after twelve o'clock, or it may be a little later, I shall be Cinderella again. I shall take off my glass slippers, and go back to my kitchen." And she had an impulse to rise and run round the gallery to beg Elizabeth to get permission for their return to their own lodgings after the ball; only Elizabeth seemed to be enjoying her tête-à-tête so much that she had not the heart to disturb her. Then she looked up at Mr. Smith, who stared at her in a puzzled and embarrassed way. "You don't seem to believe me," she said, with a defiant smile. "Did you think I was a fine lady, like all these other people?"

"I have always thought you the most lovely—the most charming—"

"Nonsense. I see you don't understand at all. So just listen, and I will tell you." Whereupon Patty proceeded to sketch herself and her domestic circumstances in what, had it been another person, would have been a simply brutal manner. She made herself out to be a Cinderella indeed, in her life and habits, a parasite, a sycophant, a jay in borrowed plumage—everything that was sordid and "low," and calculated to shock the sensibilities of a "new rich" man; making her statement with calm energy and in the most terse and expressive terms. It was her penance, and it did her good. It made her feel that she was genuine in her unworthiness, which was the great thing just now; and it made her feel, also, that she was set back in her proper place at Paul Brion's side—or, rather, at his feet. It also comforted her, for some reason, to be able, as a matter of duty, to disgust Mr. Smith.

But Mr. Smith, though he was a "new rich" man, and not given to tell people who did not know it what he had been before he got his money, was still a man, and a shrewd man too. And he was not at all disgusted. Very far, indeed, from it. This admirable honesty, so rare in a young person of her sex and charms—this touching confidence in him as a lover and a gentleman—put the crowning grace to Patty's attractions and made her irresistible. Which was not what she meant to do at all.

[CHAPTER XXVII.]

SLIGHTED.

Some hours earlier on the same evening, Eleanor, dressing for dinner and the ball in her spacious bedroom at Mrs. Duff-Scott's house, felt that she, at any rate, was arming herself for conquest. No misgivings of any sort troubled the serene and rather shallow waters of that young lady's mind. While her sisters were tossing to and fro in the perturbations of the tender passion, she had calmly taken her bearings, so to speak, and was sailing a straight course. She had summed up her possibilities and arranged her programme accordingly. In short, she had made up her mind to marry Mr. Westmoreland—who, if not all that could be desired in a man and a husband, was well enough—and thereby to take a short cut to Europe, and to all those other goals towards which her feet were set. As Mr. Westmoreland himself boasted, some years afterwards, Eleanor was not a fool; and I feel sure that this negative excellence, herein displayed, will not fail to commend itself to the gentle reader of her little history.

She had made up her mind to marry Mr. Westmoreland, and to-night she meant that he should ask her. Looking at her graceful person in the long glass, with a soft smile on her face, she had no doubt of her power to draw forth that necessary question at any convenient moment. It had not taken her long to learn her power; nor had she failed to see that it had its limitations, and that possibly other and greater men might be unaffected by it. She was a very sensible young woman, but I would not have any one run off with the idea that she was mercenary and calculating in the sordid sense. No, she was not in love, like Elizabeth and Patty; but that was not her fault. And in arranging her matrimonial plans she was actuated by all sorts of tender and human motives. In the first place, she liked her admirer, who was fond of her and a good comrade, and whom she naturally invested with many ideal excellences that he did not actually possess; and she liked (as will any single woman honestly tell me that she does not?) the thought of the dignities and privileges of a wife, and of that dearer and deeper happiness that lay behind. She was in haste to snatch at them while she had the chance, lest the dreadful fate of a childless old maid should some day overtake her—as undoubtedly it did overtake the very prettiest girls sometimes. And she was in love with the prospect of wealth at her own disposal, after her narrow experiences; not from any vulgar love of luxury and display, but for the sake of the enriched life, bright and full of beauty and knowledge, that it would make possible for her sisters as well as herself. If these motives seem poor and inadequate, in comparison with the great motive of all (as no doubt they are), we must remember that they are at the bottom of a considerable proportion of the marriages of real life, and not perhaps the least successful ones. It goes against me to admit so much, but one must take things as one finds them.

Elizabeth came in to lace up her bodice—Elizabeth, whose own soft eyes were shining, and who walked across the floor with an elastic step, trailing her long robes behind her; and Eleanor vented upon her some of the fancies which were seething in her small head. "Don't we look like brides?" she said, nodding at their reflections in the glass.

"Or bridesmaids," said Elizabeth. "Brides wear silks and satins mostly, I believe."

"If they only knew it," said Eleanor reflectively, "muslin and lace are much more becoming to the complexion. When I am married, Elizabeth, I think I shall have my dress made of that 'woven dew' that we were looking at in the Exhibition the other day."

"My dear girl, when you are married you will do nothing so preposterous. Do you suppose we are always going to let Mrs. Duff-Scott squander her money on us like this? I was telling her in her room just now that we must begin to draw the line. It is too much. The lace on these gowns cost a little fortune. But lace is always family property, and I shall pick it off and make her take it back again. So just be very careful not to tear it, dear."

"She won't take it back," said Eleanor, fingering it delicately; "she looks on us as her children, for whom nothing is too good. And perhaps—perhaps some day we may have it in our power to do things for her."

"I wish I could think so. But there is no chance of that."

"How can you tell? When we are married, we may be very well off—"

"That would be to desert her, Nelly, and to cut off all our opportunities for repaying her."

"No. It would please her more than anything. We might settle down close to her—one of us, at any rate—and she could advise us about furnishing and housekeeping. To have the choosing of the colours for our drawing-rooms, and all that sort of thing, would give her ecstasies of delight."

"Bless her!" was Elizabeth's pious and fervent rejoinder.

Then Eleanor laid out her fan and gloves for the evening, and the girls went down to dinner. Patty was in the music-room, working off her excitement in one of Liszt's rhapsodies, to which Mrs. Duff-Scott was listening with critical approval—the girl very seldom putting her brilliant powers of execution to such evident proof; and the major was smiling to himself as he paced gently up and down the Persian carpeted parquet of the long drawing-room beyond, waiting for the sound of the dinner bell, and the appearance of his dear Elizabeth. As soon as she came in, he went up to her, still subtly smiling, carrying a beautiful bouquet in his hand. It was composed almost entirely of that flower which is so sweet and lovely, but so rare in Australia, the lily of the valley (and lest the reader should say it was impossible, I can tell him or her that I saw it and smelt it that very night, and in that very Melbourne ballroom where Elizabeth disported herself, with my own eyes and nose), the great cluster of white bells delicately thinned and veiled in the finest and most ethereal feathers of maiden-hair. "For you," said the major, looking at her with his sagacious eyes.

"Oh!" she cried, taking it with tremulous eagerness, and inhaling its delicious perfume in a long breath. "Real lilies of the valley, and I have never seen them before. But not for me, surely," she added; "I have already the beautiful bouquet you told the gardener to cut for me."

"You may make that over to my wife," said the major, plaintively. "I thought she was above carrying flowers about with her to parties—she used to say it was bad art—you did, my dear, so don't deny it; you told me distinctly that that was not what flowers were meant for. But she says she will have your bouquet, Elizabeth, so that you may not be afraid of hurting my feelings by taking this that is so much better. Where the fellow got it from I can't imagine. I only know of one place where lilies of the valley grow, and they are not for sale there."

Elizabeth looked at him with slowly-crimsoning cheeks. "What fellow?" she asked.

He returned her look with one that only Major Duff-Scott's eyes could give. "I don't know," he said softly.

"He does know," his wife broke in; "I can see by his manner that he knows perfectly well."

"I assure you, on my word of honour, that I don't," protested the little major, still with a distant sparkle in his quaint eyes. "It was brought to the door just now by somebody, who said it was for Miss King—that's all."

"It might be for any of them," said Mrs. Duff-Scott, slightly put out by the liberty that somebody had taken without her leave. "They are all Miss Kings to outside people. It was a very stupid way of sending it."

"Will you take it for yourself?" said Elizabeth, holding it out to her chaperon. "Let me keep my own, and you take this."

"O no," said Mrs. Duff-Scott, flinging out her hands. "That would never do. It was meant for one of you, of course—not for me. I think Mr. Smith sent it. It must have been either he or Mr. Westmoreland, and I fancy Mr. Westmoreland would not choose lilies of the valley, even if he could get them. I think you had better draw lots for it, pending further information."

Patty, rising from the piano with a laugh, declared that she would not have it, on any account. Eleanor believed that it was meant for her, and that Mr. Westmoreland had better taste than people gave him credit for; and she had a mind to put in her claim for it. But the major set her aside gently. "No," he said, "it belongs to Elizabeth. I don't know who sent it—you may shake your head at me, my dear; I can't help it if you don't believe me—but I am convinced that it is Elizabeth's lawful property."

"As if that didn't prove that you know!" retorted Mrs. Duff-Scott.

He was still looking at Elizabeth, who was holding her lilies of the valley to her breast. His eyes asked her whether she did not endorse his views, and when she lifted her face at the sound of the dinner bell, she satisfied him, without at all intending to do so, that she did. She knew that the bouquet had been sent for her.

It was carefully set into the top of a cloisonné pot in a cool corner until dinner was over, and until the girls were wrapped up and the carriage waiting for them at the hall door. Then the elder sister fetched it from the drawing-room, and carried it out into the balmy summer night, still held against her breast as if she were afraid it might be taken from her; and the younger sister gazed at it smilingly, convinced that it was Mr. Westmoreland's tribute to herself, and magnanimously determined to beg him not to let Elizabeth know it. Thus the evening began happily for both of them. And by-and-bye their carriage slowly ploughed its way to the Town Hall entrance, and they went up the stone stairs to the vestibule and the cloak-room and the ball-room, and had their names shouted out so that every ear listening for them should hear and heed, and were received by the hospitable bachelors and passed into the great hall that was so dazzlingly splendid to their unsophisticated eyes; and the first face that Eleanor was aware of was Mr. Westmoreland's, standing out solidly from the double row of them that lined the doorway. She gave him a side-long glance as she bowed and passed, and then stood by her chaperon's side in the middle of the room, and waited for him to come to her. But he did not come. She waited, and watched, and listened, with her thanks and explanations all ready, chatting smilingly to her party the while in perfect ease of mind; but, to her great surprise, she waited in vain. Perhaps he had to stand by the door till the Governor came; perhaps he had other duties to perform that kept him from her and his private pursuits; perhaps he had forgotten that he had asked her for the first dance two days ago; perhaps he had noticed her bouquet, and had supposed that she had given it away, and was offended with her. She had a serene and patient temperament, and did not allow herself to be put out; it would all be explained presently. And in the meantime the major introduced his friends to her, and she began to fill her programme rapidly.

The evening passed on. Mrs. Duff-Scott settled herself in the particular one of the series of boudoirs under the gallery that struck her as having a commanding prospect. The Governor came, the band played, the guests danced, and promenaded, and danced again; and Mr. Westmoreland was nowhere to be seen. Eleanor was beset with other partners, and thought it well to punish him by letting them forestall him as they would; and, provisionally, she captivated a couple of naval officers by her proficiency in foreign languages, and made various men happy by her graceful and gay demeanour. By-and-bye, however, she came across her recreant admirer—as she was bound to do some time. He was leaning against a pillar, his dull eyes roving over the crowd before him, evidently looking for some one. She thought he was looking for her.

"Well?" she said, archly, pausing before him, on the arm of an Exhibition commissioner with whom she was about to plunge into the intricacies of the lancers. Mr. Westmoreland looked at her with a start and in momentary confusion.

"Oh—er," he stammered, hurriedly, "here you are! Where have you been hiding yourself all the evening?" Then, after a pause, "Got any dances saved for me?"

"Saved, indeed!" she retorted. "What next? When you don't take the trouble to come and ask for them!"

"I am so engaged to-night, Miss Eleanor——"

"I see you are. Never mind—I can get on without you." She walked on a step, and turned back. "Did you send me a pretty bouquet just now?" she whispered, touching his arm. "I think you did, and it was so good of you, but there was some mistake about it—" She checked herself, seeing a blank look in his face, and blushed violently. "Oh, it was not you!" she exclaimed, in a shocked voice, wishing the ball-room floor would open and swallow her up.

"Really," he said, "I—I was very remiss—I'm awfully sorry." And he gave her to understand, to her profound consternation, that he had fully intended to send her a bouquet, but had forgotten it in the rush of his many important engagements.

She passed on to her lancers with a wan smile, and presently saw him, under those seductive fern trees upstairs, with the person whom he had been looking for when she accosted him. "There's Westmoreland and his old flame," remarked her then partner, a club-frequenting youth who knew all about everybody. "He calls her the handsomest woman out—because she's got a lot of money, I suppose. All the Westmorelands are worshippers of the golden calf, father and son—a regular set of screws the old fellows were, and he's got the family eye to the main chance. Trust him! I can't see anything in her; can you? She's as round as a tub, and as swarthy as a gipsy. I like women"—looking at his partner—"to be tall, and slender, and fair. That's my style."

This was how poor Eleanor's pleasure in her first ball was spoiled. I am aware that it looks a very poor and shabby little episode, not worthy of a chapter to itself; but then things are not always what they seem, and, as a matter of fact, the life histories of a large majority of us are made up of just such unheroic passages.

[CHAPTER XXVIII.]

"WRITE ME AS ONE WHO LOVES HIS FELLOW MEN."

When Elizabeth went into the room, watchfully attended by the major, who was deeply interested in her proceedings, she was perhaps the happiest woman of all that gala company. She was in love, and she was going to meet her lover—which things meant to her something different from what they mean to girls brought up in conventional habits of thought. Eve in the Garden of Eden could not have been more pure and unsophisticated, more absolutely natural, more warmly human, more blindly confiding and incautious than she; therefore she had obeyed her strongest instinct without hesitation or reserve, and had given herself up to the delight of loving without thought of cost or consequences. Where her affections were concerned she was incapable of compromise or calculation; it was only the noble and simple rectitude that was the foundation of her character and education which could "save her from herself," as we call it, and that only in the last extremity. Just now she was in the full flood-tide, and she let herself go with it without an effort. Adam's "graceful consort" could not have had a more primitive notion of what was appropriate and expected of her under the circumstances. She stood in the brilliant ball-room, without a particle of self-consciousness, in an attitude of unaffected dignity, and with a radiance of gentle happiness all over her, that made her beautiful to look at, though she was not technically beautiful. The major watched her with profound interest, reading her like an open book; he knew what was happening, and what was going to happen (he mostly did), though he had a habit of keeping his own counsel about his own discoveries. He noted her pose, which, besides being so admirably graceful, so evidently implied expectancy; the way she held her flowers to her breast, her chin just touched by the fringes of maiden-hair, while she gently turned her head from side to side. And he saw her lift her eyes to the gallery, saw at the same moment a light spread over her face that had a superficial resemblance to a smile, though her sensitive mouth never changed its expression of firm repose; and, chuckling silently to himself, he walked away to find a sofa for his wife.

Presently Mrs. Duff-Scott, suitably enthroned, and with her younger girls already carried off by her husband from her side, saw Mr. Yelverton approaching her, and rejoiced at the prospect of securing his society for herself and having the tedium of the chaperon's inactivity relieved by sensible conversation. "Ah, so you are here!" she exclaimed cordially; "I thought balls were things quite out of your line."

"So they are," he said, shaking hands with her and Elizabeth impartially, without a glance at the latter. "But I consider it a duty to investigate the customs of the country. I like to look all round when I am about it."

"Quite right. This is distinctly one of our institutions, and I am very glad you are not above taking notice of it."

"I am not above taking notice of anything, I hope."

"No, of course not. You are a true philosopher. There is no dilettantism about you. That is what I like in you," she added frankly. "Come and sit down here between Miss King and me, and talk to us. I want to know how the emigration business is getting on."

He sat down between the two ladies, Elizabeth drawing back her white skirts.

"I have been doing no business, emigration or other," he said; "I have been spending my time in pleasure."

"Is it possible? Well, I am glad to hear it. I should very much like to know what stands for pleasure with you, only it would be too rude a question."

"I have been in the country," he said, smiling.

"H—m—that's not saying much. You don't mean to tell me, I see. Talking of the country—look at Elizabeth's bouquet. Did you think we could raise lilies of the valley like those?"

He bent his head slightly to smell them. "I heard that they did grow hereabouts," he said; and his eyes and Elizabeth's met for a moment over the fragrant flowers that she held between them, while Mrs. Duff-Scott detailed the negligent circumstances of their presentation, which left it a matter of doubt where they came from and for whom they were intended.

"I want to find Mr. Smith," said she; "I fancy he can give us information."

"I don't think so," said Mr. Yelverton; "he was showing me a lily of the valley in his button-hole just now as a great rarity in these parts."

Then it flashed across Mrs. Duff-Scott that Paul Brion might have been the donor, and she said no more.

For some time the trio sat upon the sofa, and the matron and the philanthropist discussed political economy in its modern developments. They talked about emigration; they talked about protection—and wherein a promising, but inexperienced, young country was doing its best to retard the wheels of progress—as if they were at a committee meeting rather than disporting themselves at a ball. The major found partners for the younger girls, but he left Elizabeth to her devices; at least he did so for a long time—until it seemed to him that she was being neglected by her companions. Then he started across the room to rescue her from her obscurity. At the moment that he came in sight, Mr. Yelverton turned to her. "What about dancing, Miss King?" he said, quickly. "May I be allowed to do my best?"

"I cannot dance," said Elizabeth. "I began too late—I can't take to it, somehow."

"My dear," said Mrs. Duff-Scott, "that is nonsense. All you want is practice. And I am not going to allow you to become a wall-flower." She turned her head to greet some newly-arrived friends, and Mr. Yelverton rose and offered his arm to Elizabeth.

"Let us go and practise," he said, and straightway they passed down the room, threading a crowd once more, and went upstairs to the gallery, which was a primeval forest in its solitude at this comparatively early hour. "There is no reason why you should dance if you don't like it," he remarked; "we can sit here and look on." Then, when she was comfortably settled in her cushions under the fern trees, he leaned forward and touched her bouquet with a gesture that was significant of the unacknowledged but well-understood intimacy between them. "I am so glad I was able to get them for you," he said; "I wanted you to know what they were really like—when you told me how much your mother had loved them."

"I can't thank you," she replied.

"Do not," he said. "It is for me to thank you for accepting them. I wish you could see them in my garden at Yelverton. There is a dark corner between two gables of the house where they make a perfect carpet in April."

She lifted those she held to her face, and sniffed luxuriously.

"There is a room in that recess," he went on, "a lady's sitting-room. Not a very healthy spot, by the way, it is too dank and dark. It was fitted up for poor Elizabeth Leigh when my two uncles, Patrick and Kingscote, expected her to come and live there, each wanting her for his wife—so my grandmother used to say. It has never been altered, though nearly all the rest of the house has been turned inside out. I think the lilies of the valley were planted there for her. I wish you could see that room. You would like sitting by the open window—it is one of those old diamond-paned casements, and has got some interesting stained glass in it—and seeing the sun shine on the grey walls outside, and smelling the lilies in that green well that the sun cannot reach down below. It is just one of those things that would suit you."

She listened silently, gazing at the great organ opposite, towering out of the groves of flowers at its base, without seeing what it was she looked at. After a pause he went on, still leaning forward, with his arms resting on his knees. "I can think of nothing now but how much I want you to see and know everything that makes my life at home," he said.

"Tell me about it," she said, with the woman's instinctive desire for delay at this juncture, not because she didn't want to hear the rest, but to prolong the sweetness of anticipation; "tell me what your life at Yelverton is like."

"I have not had much of it at present," he replied, after a brief pause. "The place was let for a long while. Then, when I took it over again, I made it into a sort of convalescent home, and training-place, and general starting-point for girls and children—protégées of my friend who does slumming in the orthodox way. Though he disapproves of me he makes use of me, and, of course, I don't disapprove of him, and am very glad to help him. The house is too big for me alone, and it seems the best use I can put it to. Of course I keep control of it; I take the poor things in on the condition that they are to be disciplined after my system and not his—his may be the best, but they don't enjoy it as they do mine—and when I am at home I run down once a week or so to see how they are getting on."

"And how is it now?"

"Now the house is just packed, I believe, from top to bottom. I got a letter a few days ago from my faithful lieutenant, who looks after things for me, to say that it couldn't hold many more, and that the funds of the institution are stretched to their utmost capacity to provide supplies."

"The funds? Oh, you must certainly use that other money now!"

"Yes, I shall use it now. I have, indeed, already appropriated a small instalment. I told Le Breton to draw on it, rather than let one child go that we could take—rather than let one opportunity be lost."

"You have other people working with you, then?"

"A good many—yes, and a very miscellaneous lot you would think them. Le Breton is the one I trust as I do myself. I could not have been here now if it had not been for him. He is my right hand."

"Who is he?" she asked, fascinated, in spite of her preoccupations, by this sketch of a life that had really found its mission in the world, and one so beneficent and so satisfying.

"He is a very interesting man," said Mr. Yelverton, who still leaned towards her, touching her flowers occasionally with a tender audacity; "a man to respect and admire—a brave man who would have been burnt at the stake had he lived a few centuries ago. He was once a clergyman, but he gave that up."

"He gave it up!" repeated Elizabeth, who had read "Thomas à Kempis" and the Christian Year daily since she was a child, as her mother had done before her.

"He couldn't stand it," said Mr. Yelverton, simply. "You see he was a man with a very literal, and straight-going, and independent mind—a mind that could nohow bend itself to the necessities of the case. I don't suppose he ever really gave himself up out of his own control, but, at any rate, when he got to know the world and the kind of time that we had come to, he couldn't pretend to shut his eyes. He couldn't make-believe that he was all the same as he had been when a mere lad of three-and-twenty, and that nothing had happened to change things while he had been learning and growing. And once he fell out with his conscience there was no patching up the breach with compromises for him. He tried it, poor fellow—he had a tough tussle before he gave in. It was a great step to take, you know—a martyrdom with all the pain and none of the glory—that nobody could sympathise with or understand."

Elizabeth was sitting very still, watching with unseeing eyes the glitter of a conspicuous diamond tiara in the moving crowd below. She, at any rate, could neither sympathise nor understand.

"He was in the thick of his troubles when I first met him," Mr. Yelverton went on. "He was working hard in one of the East End parishes, doing his level best, as the Yankees say, and tormented all the time, not only by his own scruples and self-accusations, but by a perfect hornet's nest of ecclesiastical persecutors. I said to him. 'Be an honest man, and give up being a parson—'"

"Isn't it possible to be both?" Elizabeth broke in.

"No doubt it is. But it was not possible for him. Seeing that, I advised him to let go, and leave those that could to hold on—as I am glad they do hold on, for we want the brake down at the rate we are going. He was in agonies of dread about the future, because he had a wife and children, so I offered him a salary equal to the emoluments of his living to come and work with me. 'You and I will do what good we can together,' I said, 'without pretending to be anything more than what we know we are.' And so he cast in his lot with me, and we have worked together ever since. They call him all sorts of bad names, but he doesn't care—at least not much. It is such a relief to him to be able to hold his head up as a free man—and he does work with such a zest compared to what he did!"

"And you," said Elizabeth, drawing short breaths, "what are you?—are you a Dissenter, too?"

"Very much so, I think," he said, smiling at a term that to him, an Englishman, was obsolete, while to her, an Australian born, it had still its ancient British significance (for she had been born and reared in her hermit home, the devoutest of English-churchwomen).

"And yet, in one sense, no one could be less so."

"But what are you?" she urged, suddenly revealing to him that she was frightened by this ambiguity.

"Really, I don't know," he replied, looking at her gravely. "I think if I had to label my religious faith in the usual way, with a motto, I should say I was a Humanitarian. The word has been a good deal battered about and spoiled, but it expresses my creed better than any other."

"A Humanitarian!" she ejaculated with a cold and sinking heart. "Is that all?" To her, in such a connection, it was but another word for an infidel.

[CHAPTER XXIX.]

PATTY CONFESSES.

A little group of their male attendants stood in the lobby, while Mrs. Duff-Scott and the girls put on their wraps in the cloak-room. When the ladies reappeared, they fell into the order in which Paul, unseen in the shadows of the street, saw them descend the steps to the pavement.

"May I come and see you to-morrow morning?" asked Mr. Yelverton of Elizabeth, whom he especially escorted.

"Not—not to-morrow," she replied. "We shall be at Myrtle Street, and we never receive any visitors there."

"At Myrtle Street!" exclaimed the major, who also walked beside her. "Surely you are not going to run off to Myrtle Street to-morrow?"

"We are going there now," said she, "if we can get in. Mrs. Duff-Scott knows."

"Let them alone," said the chaperon, looking back over her shoulder. "If they have a fancy to go home they shall go. I won't have them persuaded." She was as reluctant to leave them at Myrtle Street as the major could be, but she carefully abstained, as she always did, from interfering with their wishes when nothing of importance was involved. She was wise enough to know that she would have the stronger hold on them by seeming to leave them their liberty.

They were put into the carriage by their attentive cavaliers, the major taking his now frequent box seat in order to accompany them; and Mr. Smith and Mr. Yelverton were left standing on the pavement. Arrived at Myrtle Street, it was found that the house was still open, and the girls bade the elder couple an effusively affectionate and compunctious good-night.

"And when shall I see you again?" Mrs. Duff-Scott inquired, with a carefully composed smile and cheerful air.

"To-morrow," said Elizabeth, eagerly; "to-morrow, of course, some of us will come." All three girls had a painful feeling that they were ungrateful, while under obligations to be grateful, in spite of their friend's effort to prevent it, as they stood a moment in the warm night at their street door, and watched the carriage roll away. And yet they were so glad to be on their own "tauri" to-night—even Eleanor, who had grown more out of tune with the old frugal life than any of them.

They were let in by the ground-floor landlady, with whom they chatted for a few minutes, arranging about the materials for their breakfast; then they went upstairs to their lonely little bedrooms, where they lit their candles and began at once to prepare for bed. They were dead tired, they said, and wanted to sleep and not to talk.

But a full hour after their separation for the night, each one was as wide awake as she had been all day. Elizabeth was kneeling on the floor by her bedside, still half-dressed—she had not changed her attitude for a long time, though the undulations of her body showed how far from passive rest she was—when Patty, clothed only in her night-gown, crept in, making no noise with her bare feet.

"Elizabeth," she whispered, laying her hand on her sister's shoulder, "are you asleep?—or are you saying your prayers?"

Elizabeth, startled, lifted up her head, and disclosed to Patty's gaze in the candle-light a pale, and strained, and careworn face, "I was saying my prayers," she replied, with a dazed look. "Why are you out of bed, my darling? What is the matter?"

"That is what I want to know," said Patty, sitting down on the bed. "What is the matter with us all? What has come to us? Nelly has been crying ever since I put the light out—she thought I couldn't hear her, but she was mistaken—sobbing and sniffing under the bedclothes, and blowing her nose in that elaborately cautious way—"

"Oh, poor, dear child!" interrupted the maternal elder sister, making a start towards the door.

"No, don't go to her," said Patty, putting out her hand; "leave her alone—she is quiet now. Besides, you couldn't do her any good. Do you know what she is fretting about? Because Mr. Westmoreland has been neglecting her. Would you believe it? She is caring about it, after all—and we thought it was only fun. She doesn't care about him, she couldn't do that—"

"We can't tell," interrupted Elizabeth. "It is not for us to say. Perhaps she does, poor child!"

"Oh, she couldn't," Patty scornfully insisted. "That is quite impossible. No, she has got fond of this life that we are living now with Mrs. Duff-Scott—I have seen it, how it has laid hold of her—and she would like to marry him so that she could have it always. That is what she has come to. Oh, Elizabeth, don't you wish we had gone to Europe at the very first, and never come to Melbourne at all!" Here Patty herself broke down, and uttered a little shaking, hysterical sob. "Everything seems to be going wrong with us here! It does not look so, I know, but at the bottom of my heart I feel it. Why did we turn aside to waste and spoil ourselves like this, instead of going on to the life that we had laid out—a real life, that we should never have had to be ashamed of?"

Elizabeth was silent for a few minutes, soothing her sister's excitement with maternal caresses, and at the same time thinking with all her might. "We must try not to get confused," she said presently. "Life is life, you know, Patty, wherever you are—all the other things are incidental. And we need not try to struggle with everything at once. I think we have done our best, when we have had anything to do—any serious step to take—since we came to Melbourne; and in Europe we could have done no more. It seemed right to please Mrs. Duff-Scott, and to accept such a treasure as her friendship when it came to us in what seemed such a providential way—did it not? It seemed so to me. It would have been ungenerous to have held out against her—and we were always a little given to be too proud of standing alone. It makes her happy to have us. I don't know what work we could have done that would have been more profitable than that. Patty"—after another thoughtful pause—"I don't think it is that things are going wrong, dear. It is only that we have to manage them, and to steer our way, and to take care of ourselves, and that is so trying and perplexing. God knows I find it difficult! So, I suppose, does everyone."

"You, Elizabeth? You always seem to know what is right. And you are so good that you never ought to have troubles."

"If Nelly is susceptible to such a temptation as Mr. Westmoreland—Mr. Westmoreland, because he is rich—she would not have gone far with us, in any case," Elizabeth went on, putting aside the allusion to herself. "Europe would not have strengthened her. It would have been all the same. While, as for you, my darling—"

"I—I!" broke in Patty excitedly. "I should have been happy now, and not as I am! I should have been saved from making a fool of myself if I had gone to Europe! I should have been worth something, and able to do something, there!"

"How can you tell, dear child? And why do you suppose you have been foolish? I don't think so. On the contrary, it has often seemed to me that you have been the sensible one of us all."

"O, Elizabeth, don't laugh at me!" wailed Patty, reproachfully.

"I laugh at you, my darling! What an idea! I mean it, every word. You see everything in a distorted and exaggerated way just now, because you are tired and your nerves are over-wrought. You are not yourself to-night, Patty. You will cheer up—we shall all cheer up—when we have had a good sleep and a little quiet time to think things over."

"No, I am not myself, indeed," assented Patty, with moody passion. "I am not myself at all—to be made to feel so weak and miserable!" She put her face down in her hands and began to cry with more abandonment at the thought of how weak she had become.

"But Patty, dearest, there must be something the matter with you," her motherly elder sister cried, much distressed by this abnormal symptom. "Are you feeling ill? Don't frighten me like this."

The girl laid her head upon her sister's shoulder, and there let herself loose from all restraint. "You know what is the matter," she sobbed; "you know as well as I do what is the matter—that it is Paul Brion who worries me so and makes me so utterly wretched."

"Paul Brion! He worry you, Patty—he make you wretched?"

"You have always been delicate and considerate, Elizabeth—you have never said anything—but I know you know all about it, and how spoiled I am, and how spoiled everything is because of him. I hate to talk of it—I can't bear even you to see that I am fretting about him—but I can't help it! and I know you understand. When I have had just one good cry," she concluded, with a fresh and violent burst of tears, "perhaps I shall get on better."

Elizabeth stared at the wall over her sister's head in dumb amazement, evidently not deserving the credit for perspicacity accorded to her. "Do you mean," she said slowly, "do you really mean—"

"Yes," sobbed Patty, desperate, for the moment dead to shame.

"Oh, how blind—how wickedly blind—how stupid—how selfish I have been!" Elizabeth exclaimed, after another pause in which to collect her shocked and bewildered faculties. "I never dreamt about it, my darling—never, for a single moment. I thought—I always had the settled impression that you did not like him."

"I don't like him," said Patty, fiercely, lifting herself up. "I love him—I love him! I must say it right out once, if I never speak another word," and she bent her head back a little, and stretched out her arms with an indescribable gesture as if she saw him standing before her. "He is a man—a real, true, strong man—who works, and thinks, and lives—lives! It is all serious with him, as I wanted it to be with me—and I might have been worthy of him! A little while ago we were so near to each other—so near that we almost touched—and now no two people could be farther apart. I have done him wrong—I have been a wicked fool, but I am punished for it out of all proportion. He flirt with a married woman! What could I have been dreaming of? Oh, how disgusting I must be to have allowed such an idea to come into my head! And yet it was only a little thing, Elizabeth, when you come to think of it relatively—the only time I ever really did him injustice, and it was only for a moment. No one can always do what is right and fair without making a mistake sometimes—it was just a mistake for want of thinking. But it has taken him from me as completely as if I had committed suicide, and was dead and buried and done with. It has made him hate me. No wonder! If he cared about me, I wouldn't be too proud to beg his pardon, but he doesn't—he doesn't! And so I must face it out, or else he will think I am running after him, and he will despise me more than he does already."

"But if he was doing no harm," said Elizabeth, soothingly, "he could not suppose that you thought he was."

"No," said Patty, "he will never think I was so disgusting as to think that of him. But it is as bad as if he did. That at least was a great, outrageous, downright wrong, worth fighting about, and not the pitiful shabby thing that it appears to him. For, of course, he thinks I did it because I was too grand to notice him while I was wearing a fine dress and swelling about with great people. It never occurred to me that it would be possible for him or anybody to suspect me of that," said Patty, proudly, drawing herself up; "but afterwards I saw that he could not help doing it. And ever since then it has been getting worse and worse—everything has seemed to point to its being so. Haven't you noticed? I never see him except I am with people who are above noticing him; and Mr. Smith—oh, what I have suffered from Mr. Smith to-night, Elizabeth!—has all this time been thinking I was going to marry him, and I can see now how it must have looked to other people as if I was. Just think of it!"—with a gesture of intense disgust. "As if any girl could stoop to that, after having had such a contrast before her eyes! No wonder he hates me and despises me—no wonder he looks at me as if I were the dirt beneath his feet. I wish I were," she added, with reckless passion; "oh, my dear love, I only wish I were!"

When she was about it, Patty cleansed her stuffed bosom thoroughly. It was not her way to do things by halves. She rhapsodised about her love and her lover with a wild extravagance that was proportionate to the strained reserve and restraint that she had so long put upon her emotions. After which came the inevitable reaction. The fit being over, she braced herself up again, and was twice as strong-minded and self-sufficient as before. When the morning came, and she and Elizabeth busied themselves with housework—Eleanor being relegated to the sofa with a sick headache—the girl who had dissolved herself in tears and given way to temporary insanity, as she chose herself to call it, so recently, was bright, and brusque, and cheerful, in spite of sultry weather; and not only did she pretend, even to her confidante, that the young man on the other side of the wall had no place in her thoughts, but she hardened her heart to adamant against him, for having been the cause of her humiliating lapse from dignity. It was quite a lucky chance, indeed, that she did not straightway go and accept the hand and fortune of Mr. Smith, by way of making reparation for the outrage committed vicariously by Paul Brion on her self-respect.

[CHAPTER XXX.]

THE OLD AND THE NEW.

The weather was scorchingly hot and a thunderstorm brewing when the girls sat down to their frugal lunch at mid-day. It was composed of bread and butter and pickled fish, for which, under the circumstances, they had not appetite enough. They trifled with the homely viands for awhile, in a manner quite unusual with them, in whatever state of the atmosphere; and then they said they would "make up" at tea time, if weather permitted, and cleared the table. Eleanor was sent to lie down in her room, Patty volunteered to read a pleasant novel to the invalid, and Elizabeth put on her bonnet to pay her promised visit to Mrs. Duff-Scott.

She found her friend in the cool music-room, standing by the piano, on which some loose white sheets were scattered. The major sat on a sofa, surveying the energetic woman with a sad and pensive smile.

"Are you looking over new music?" asked Elizabeth, as she walked in.

"O my dear, is that you? How good of you to venture out in this heat!—but I knew you would," exclaimed the lady of the house, coming forward with outstretched arms of welcome. "Music, did you say?—O dear no!" as if music were the last thing likely to interest her. "It is something of far more importance."

"Yelverton has been here," said the major, sadly; "and he has been sketching some plans for Whitechapel cottages. My wife thinks they are most artistic."

"So they are," she insisted, hardly, "though I don't believe I used the word; for things are artistic when they are suitable for the purpose they are meant for, and only pretend to be what they are. Look at this, Elizabeth. You see it is of no use to build Peabody houses in these frightfully low neighbourhoods, where half-starved creatures are packed together like herrings in a barrel—Mr. Yelverton has explained that quite clearly. The better class of poor come to live in them, and the poorest of all are worse off instead of better, because they have less room than they had before. You must take into consideration that there is only a certain amount of space, and if you build model lodgings here, and a school there, and a new street somewhere else, you do good, of course, but you herd the poor street-hawkers and people of that class more and more thickly into their wretched dens, where they haven't enough room to breathe as it is—"

"I think I'll go, my dear, if you'll excuse me," interrupted the major, humbly, in tones of deep dejection.

"And therefore," proceeded Mrs. Duff-Scott, taking no notice of her husband, "the proper and reasonable thing to do—if you want to help those who are most in need of help—is to let fine schemes alone. Mr. Yelverton expects to come into a large property soon, and he means to buy into those wretched neighbourhoods, where he can, and to build for one-room tenants—for cheapness and low rents. He will get about four per cent. on his money, but that he will use to improve with—I mean for putting them in the way of sanitary habits, poor creatures. He makes a great point of teaching them sanitation. He seems to think more of that than about teaching them the Bible, and really one can hardly wonder at it when one sees the frightful depravity and general demoralisation that come of ignorance and stupidity in those matters—and he sees so much of it. He seems to be always rooting about in those sewers and dunghills, as he calls them—he is rather addicted to strong expressions, if you notice—and turning things out from the very bottom. He is queer in some of his notions, but he is a good man, Elizabeth. One can forgive him his little crotchets, for the sake of all the good he does—it must be incalculable! He shrinks from nothing, and spends himself trying to better the things that are so bad that most people feel there is nothing for it but to shut their eyes to them—without making any fuss about it either, or setting himself up for a saint. Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Duff-Scott, throwing a contemptuous glance around her museum of precious curiosities, "how inconceivably petty and selfish it seems to care for rubbish like this, when there are such miseries in the world that we might lighten, as he does, if we would only set ourselves to it in the same spirit."

Rubbish!—those priceless pots and plates, those brasses and ivories and enamels, those oriental carpets and tapestries, those unique miscellaneous relics of the mediæval prime! Truly the Cause of Humanity had taken hold of Mrs. Duff-Scott at last.

She sat down in an arm-chair, having invited Elizabeth to take off her hat and make herself as comfortable as the state of the weather permitted, and began to wave a large fan to and fro while she looked into vacant space with shining eyes.

"He is a strange man," she said musingly. "A most interesting, admirable man, but full of queer ideas—not at all like any man I ever met before. He has been lunching with us, Elizabeth—he came quite early—and we have had an immense deal of talk. I wish you had been here to listen to him—though I don't know that it would have been very good for you, either. He is extremely free, and what you might call revolutionary, in his opinions; he treats the most sacred subjects as if they were to be judged and criticised like common subjects. He talks of the religions of the world, for instance, as if they were all on the same foundation, and calls the Bible our Veda or Koran—says they are all alike inspired writings because they respectively express the religious spirit, craving for knowledge of the mystery of life and the unseen, that is an integral part of man's nature, and universal in all races, though developed according to circumstances. He says all mankind are children of God, and brothers, and that he declines to make invidious distinctions. And personal religion to him seems nothing more than the most rudimentary morality—simply to speak the truth and to be unselfish—just as to be selfish or untrue are the only sins he will acknowledge that we are responsible for out of the long catalogue of sins that stain this unhappy world. He won't call it an unhappy world, by the way, in spite of the cruel things he sees; he is the most optimistic of unbelievers. It will all come right some day—and our time will be called the dark ages by our remote descendants. Ever since men and women came first, they have been getting better and higher—the world increases in human goodness steadily, and will go on doing so as long as it is a world—and that because of the natural instincts and aspirations of human nature, and not from what we have always supposed all our improvement came from—rather in spite of that, indeed."

Mrs. Duff-Scott poured out this information, which had been seething in her active mind, volubly and with a desire to relieve herself to some one; but here she checked herself, feeling that she had better have left it all unsaid, not less for Elizabeth's sake than for her own. She got up out of her seat and began to pace about the room with a restless air. She was genuinely troubled. It was as if a window in a closed chamber had been opened, letting in a too strong wind that was blowing the delicate furniture all about; now, with the woman's instinctive timidity and fear (that may be less a weakness than a safeguard), she was eager to shut it to again, though suspecting that it might be too late to repair the damage done. Now that she took time to think about it, she felt particularly guilty on Elizabeth's account, who had not had her experience, and was not furnished with her ripe judgment and powers of discrimination as a preservative against the danger of contact with heterodox ideas.

"I ought not to repeat such things," she exclaimed, vexedly, beginning to gather up the plans of the Whitechapel cottages, but observing only her companion's strained and wistful face. "The mere independent hypotheses and speculations of one man, when no two seem ever to think alike! I suppose those who study ancient history and literatures, and the sciences generally, get into the habit of pulling things to pieces—"

"Those who learn most ought to know most," suggested Elizabeth.

"They ought, my dear; but it doesn't follow."

"Not when they are so earnest in trying to find out?"

"No; that very earnestness is against them—they over-reach themselves. They get confused, too, with learning so much, and mixing so many things up together." Mrs. Duff-Scott was a little reckless as to means so long as she could compass the desired end—which was the shutting of that metaphorical window which she had incautiously set (or left) open.

"Well, he believes in God—that all men are God's children," the girl continued, clinging where she could. "That seems like religion to me—it is a good and loving way to think of God, that He gave His spirit to all alike from the beginning—that He is so just and kind to all, and not only to a few."

"Yes, he believes in God. He believes in the Bible, too, in a sort of a way. He says he would have the lessons of the New Testament and the life of Christ disseminated far and wide, but not as they are now, with the moral left out, and not as if those who wrote them were wise enough for all time. But, whatever his beliefs may be," said Mrs. Duff-Scott, "they are not what will satisfy us, Elizabeth. You and I must hold fast to our faith in Christ, dear child, or I don't know what would become of us. We will let 'whys' alone—we will not trouble ourselves to try and find out mysteries that no doubt are wisely withheld from us, and that anyhow we should never be able to understand."

Here the servant entered with a gliding step, opened a little Sutherland table before his mistress's chair, spread the æsthetic cloth, and set out the dainty tea service. Outside the storm had burst, and was now spending itself and cooling the hot air in a steady shower that made a rushing sound on the gravel. Mrs. Duff-Scott, who had reseated herself, leant back silently with an air of reaction after her strong emotion in the expression of her handsome face and form, and Elizabeth mechanically got up to pour out the tea. Presently, as still in silence they began to sip and munch their afternoon repast, the girl saw on the piano near which she stood a photograph that arrested her attention. "What is this?" she asked. "Did he bring this too?" It was a copy of Luke Fildes' picture of "The Casuals." Mrs. Duff-Scott took it from her hand.

"No, it is mine," she said. "I have had it here for some time, in a portfolio amongst others, and never took any particular notice of it. I just had an idea that it was an unpleasant and disagreeable subject. I never gave it a thought—what it really meant—until this morning, when he was talking to me, and happened to mention it. I remembered that I had it, and I got it out to look at it. Oh!" setting down her teacup and holding it fairly in both hands before her—"isn't it a terrible sermon? Isn't it heartbreaking to think that it is true? And he says the truth is understated."

Like the great Buddha, when he returned from his first excursion beyond his palace gates, Elizabeth's mind was temporarily darkened by the new knowledge of the world that she was acquiring, and she looked at the picture with a fast-beating heart. "Sphinxes set up against that dead wall," she quoted from a little printed foot-note, "and none likely to be at the pains of solving them until the general overthrow." She was leaning over her friend's shoulder, and the tears were dropping from her eyes.

"They are Dickens's words," said Mrs. Duff-Scott.

"Why is it like this, I wonder?" the girl murmured, after a long, impressive pause. "We must not think it is God's fault—that can't be. It must be somebody else's fault. It cannot have been intended that a great part of the human race should be forced, from no fault of their own, to accept such a cruel lot—to be made to starve, when so many roll in riches—to be driven to crime because they cannot help it—to be driven to hell when they need not have gone there—if there is such a place—if there is any truth in what we have been taught. But"—with a kind of sad indignation—"if religion has been doing its best for ever so many centuries, and this is all that there is to show for it—doesn't that seem to say that he may be right, and that religion has been altogether misinterpreted—that we have all along been making mistakes—" She checked herself, with a feeling of dismay at her own words; and Mrs. Duff-Scott made haste to put away the picture, evidently much disturbed. Both women had taken the "short views" of life so often advocated, not from philosophical choice, but from disinclination, and perhaps inability, to take long ones; and they had the ordinary woman's conception of religion as exclusively an ecclesiastical matter. This rough disturbance of old habits of thought and sentiments of reverence and duty was very alarming; but while Elizabeth was rashly confident, because she was inexperienced, and because she longed to put faith in her beloved, Mrs. Duff-Scott was seized with a sort of panic of remorseful misgiving. To shut that window had become an absolute necessity, no matter by what means.

"My dear," she said, in desperation, "whatever you do, you must not begin to ask questions of that sort. We can never find out the answers, and it leads to endless trouble. God's ways are not as our ways—we are not in the secrets of His providence. It is for us to trust Him to know what is best. If you admit one doubt, Elizabeth, you will see that everything will go. Thousands are finding that out now-a-days, to their bitter cost. Indeed, I don't know what we are coming to—the 'general overthrow,' I suppose. I hope I, at any rate, shall not live to see it. What would life be worth to us—any of us, even the best off—if we lost our faith in God and our hope of immortality? Just try to imagine it for a moment."

Elizabeth looked at her mentor, who had again risen and was walking about the room. The girl's eyes were full of solemn thought. "Not much," she replied, gravely. "But I was never afraid of losing faith in God."

"It is best to be afraid," replied Mrs. Duff-Scott, with decision. "It is best not to run into temptation. Don't think about these difficulties, Elizabeth—leave them, leave them. You would only unsettle yourself and become wretched and discontented, and you would never be any the wiser."

Elizabeth thought over this for a few minutes, while Mrs. Duff-Scott mechanically took up a brass lota and dusted it with her handkerchief.

"Then you think one ought not to read books, or to talk to people—to try to find out the ground one stands on——"

"No, no, no—let it alone altogether. You know the ground you ought to stand on quite well. You don't want to see where you are if you can feel that God is with you. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed!" she ended in a voice broken with strong feeling, clasping her hands with a little fervent, prayerful gesture.

Elizabeth drew a long breath, and in her turn began to walk restlessly up and down the room. She had one more question to ask, but the asking of it almost choked her. "Then you would say—I suppose you think it would be wrong—for one who was a believer to marry one who was not?—however good, and noble, and useful he or she might be—however religious practically—however blameless in character?"

Mrs. Duff-Scott, forgetting for the moment that there was such a person as Mr. Yelverton in the world, sat down once more in an arm-chair, and addressed herself to the proposition on its abstract merits. She had worked herself up, by this time, into a state of highly fervid orthodoxy. Her hour of weakness was past, and she was fain to put forth and test her reserves of strength. Wherefore she had very clear views as to the iniquity of an unequal yoking together with unbelievers, and the peril of touching the unclean thing; and she stated them plainly and with all her wonted incisive vigour.

When it was all over, Elizabeth put on her hat and walked back through the pattering rain to Myrtle Street, heavy-hearted and heavy-footed, as if a weight of twenty years had been laid on her since the morning.

"Patty," she said, when her sister, warmly welcoming her return, exclaimed at her pale face and weary air, and made her take the sofa that Eleanor had vacated, "Patty, let us go away for a few weeks, shall we? I want a breath of fresh air, and to be in peace and quiet for a little, to think things over."

"So do I," said Patty. "So does Nelly. Let us write to Sam Dunn to find us lodgings."

[CHAPTER XXXI.]

IN RETREAT.

"Is it possible that we have only been away for nine months?" murmured Elizabeth, as the little steamer worked its way up to the well-remembered jetty, and she looked once more on surf and headland, island rock and scattered township, lying under the desolate moorlands along the shore. "Doesn't it seem at least nine years?"

"Or ninety," replied Patty. "I feel like a new generation. How exactly the same everything is! Here they have all been going on as they always did. There is Mrs. Dunn, dear old woman!—in the identical gown that she had on the day we went away."

Everything was the same, but they were incredibly changed. There was no sleeping on the nose of the vessel now; no shrinking from association with their fellow-passengers. The skipper touched his cap to them, which he never used to do in the old times; and the idlers on the pier, when the vessel came in, stared at them as if they had indeed been away for ninety years. Mrs. Dunn took in at a glance the details of their travelling costumes, which were of a cut and quality not often seen in those parts; and, woman-like, straightway readjusted her smiles and manners, unconsciously becoming at once more effusive and more respectful than (with the ancient waterproofs in her mind's eye) she had prepared herself to be. But Sam saw only the three fair faces, that were to him as unchanged as his own heart; and he launched himself fearlessly into the boat as soon as it came alongside, with horny hand outstretched, and boisterous welcomes.

"So y'are come back again?" he cried, "and darn glad I am to see yer, and no mistake." He added a great deal more in the way of greeting and congratulation before he got them up the landing stage and into the capacious arms of Mrs. Dunn—who was quite agreeably surprised to be hugged and kissed by three such fashionable young ladies. Then he proceeded to business with a triumphant air. "Now, Miss 'Lisbeth, yer see here's the cart—that's for the luggage. Me and the old hoss is going to take it straight up. And there is a buggy awaiting for you. And Mr. Brion told me to say as he was sorry he couldn't come down to the boat, but it's court day, yer see, and he's got a case on, and he's obliged to stop till he's done wi' that."

"Oh," exclaimed Elizabeth, hastily, "did you tell Mr. Brion that we were coming?"

"Why, of course, miss. I went and told him the very first thing—'twas only right, him being such a friend—your only friend here, as one may say."

"Oh, no, Sam, we have you."

"Me!"—with scornful humility—"I'm nothing. Yes, of course I went and told him. And he wouldn't let us get no lodgings; he said you was just to go and stay wi' Mrs. Harris and him. He would ha' wrote to tell yer, but there worn't time."

"And much more comfortable you'll be than at them lodging places," put in Mrs. Dunn. "There's nothing empty now that's at all fit for you. The season is just a-coming on, you see, and we're like to be pretty full this year."

"But we wanted to be away from the town, Mrs. Dunn."

"And so you will be away from the town. Why, bless me, you can't be much farther away—to be anywhere at all—than up there," pointing to the headland where their old home was dimly visible in the November sunshine. "There's only Mrs. Harris and the gal, and they won't interfere with you."

"Up there!" exclaimed the sisters in a breath. And Mr. and Mrs. Dunn looked with broad grins at one another.

"Well, I'm blowed!" exclaimed the fisherman. "You don't mean as Master Paul never let on about his pa and him buying the old place, do you? Why, they've had it, and the old man has been living there—he comes down every morning and goes up every night—walks both ways, he do, like a young chap—this two or three months past. Mrs. Hawkins she couldn't bear the lonesomeness of it when the winter come on, and was right down glad to get out of it. They gave Hawkins nearly double what you got for it. I told yer at the time that yer was a-throwing of it away."

The girls tried to look as if they had known all about it, while they digested their surprise. It was a very great surprise, almost amounting to a shock.

"And how is Mr. Paul?" asked Mrs. Dunn of Patty. "Dear young man, it's a long time since we've seen anything of him! I hope he's keeping his health well!"

"I think so—I hope so," said Patty gently. "He works very hard, you know, writing things for the papers. He is wanted too much to be able to take holidays like ordinary people. They couldn't get on without him."

Elizabeth turned round in astonishment: she had expected to see her sister in a blaze of wrath over Sam's unexpected communications. "I'm afraid you won't like this arrangement, dearie," she whispered. "What had we better do?"

"Oh, go—go," replied Patty, with a tremulous eagerness that she vainly tried to hide. "I don't mind it. I—I am glad to see Mr. Brion. It will be very nice to stay with him—and in our own dear old house too. Oh, I wouldn't refuse to go for anything! Besides we can't."

"No, I don't see how we can," acquiesced Elizabeth, cheerfully. Patty having no objection, she was delighted with the prospect.

They walked up the little pier in a group, the "hoss" following them with the reins upon his neck; and, while Elizabeth and Patty mounted the buggy provided by Mr. Brion, Eleanor gratified the old fisherman and his wife by choosing to stay with them and ride up in the cart. It was a lovely morning, just approaching noon, the sky as blue as—no, not as a turquoise or a sapphire—but as nothing save itself can be in a climate like ours, saturated with light and lucent colour, and giving to the sea its own but an intenser hue. I can see it all in my mind's eye—as my bodily eyes have seen it often—that dome above, that plain below, the white clouds throwing violet shadows on the water, the white gulls dipping their red legs in the shining surf and reflecting the sunlight on their white wings; but I cannot describe it. It is beyond the range of pen and ink, as of brush and pigments. As the buggy lightly climbed the steep cliff, opening the view wider at every step, the sisters sat hand in hand, leaning forward to take it all in; but they, too, said nothing—only inhaled long draughts of the delicious salt air, and felt in every invigorated fibre of them that they had done well to come. Reaching the crest of the bluff, and descending into the broken basin—or saucer, rather—in which Seaview Villa nestled, they uttered simultaneously an indignant moan at the spectacle of Mrs. Hawkins's devastations. There was the bright paint, and the whitewash, and the iron roof, and the fantastic trellis; and there was not the ivy that had mantled the eaves and the chimney stacks, nor the creepers that had fought so hard for existence, nor the squat verandah posts which they had bountifully embraced—nor any of the features that had made the old house distinct and characteristic.

"Never mind," said Patty, who was the first to recover herself. "It looks very smart and tidy. I daresay it wanted doing up badly. After all, I'd sooner see it look as unlike home as possible, now that it isn't home."

Mrs. Harris came out and warmly welcomed them in Mr. Brion's name. She took them into the old sitting-room, now utterly transformed, but cosy and inviting, notwithstanding, with the lawyer's substantial old leather chairs and sofas about it, and a round table in the middle set out for lunch, and the sea and sky shining in through the open verandah doors. She pressed them to have wine and cake to "stay" them till Eleanor and lunch time arrived; and she bustled about with them in their rooms—their own old bedrooms, in one of which was a collection of Paul's schoolboy books and treasures, while they took off their hats and washed their hands and faces; and was very motherly and hospitable, and made them feel still more pleased that they had come. They feasted, with fine appetites, on fish and gooseberry-fool at one o'clock, while Sam and Mrs. Dunn were entertained by the housekeeper in the kitchen; and in the afternoon, the cart and "hoss" having departed, they sat on the verandah in basket chairs, and drank tea, and idled, and enjoyed the situation thoroughly. Patty got a dog's-eared novel of Mayne Reid's from the book-case in her bedroom, and turned over the pages without reading them to look at the pencil marks and thumb stains; and Eleanor dozed and fanned herself; and Elizabeth sewed and thought. And then their host came home, riding up from the township on a fast and panting steed, quite thrown off his balance by emotion. He was abject in his apologies for having been deterred by cruel fate and business from meeting them at the steamer and conducting them in person to his house, and superfluous in expressions of delight at the honour they had conferred on him.

"And how did you leave my boy?" he asked presently, when due inquiries after their own health and welfare had been satisfied. He spoke as if they and Paul had all been living under one roof. "And when is he coming to see his old father again?"

Patty, who was sitting beside her host—"in his pocket," Nelly declared—and was simply servile in her affectionate demonstrations, undertook to describe Paul's condition and circumstances, and she implied a familiar knowledge of them which considerably astonished her sisters. She also gave the father a full history of all the son's good deeds in relation to themselves—described how he had befriended them in this and that emergency, and asserted warmly, and with a grave face, that she didn't know what they should have done without him.

"That's right—that's right!" said the old man, laying her hand on his knee and patting it fondly. "I was sure he would—I knew you'd find out his worth when you came to know him. We must write to him to-morrow, and tell him you have arrived safely. He doesn't know I have got you, eh? We must tell him. Perhaps we can induce him to take a little holiday himself—I am sure it is high time he had one—and join us for a few days. What do you think?"

"Oh, I am sure he can't come away just now," protested Patty, pale with eagerness and horror. "In the middle of the Exhibition—and a parliamentary crisis coming on—it would be quite impossible!"

"I don't know—I don't know. I fancy 'impossible' is not a word you will find in his dictionary," said the old gentleman encouragingly. "When he hears of our little arrangement, he'll want to take a hand, as the Yankees say. He won't like to be left out—no, no."

"But, dear Mr. Brion," Patty strenuously implored—for this was really a matter of life and death, "do think what a critical time it is! They never can spare him now."

"Then they ought to spare him. Because he is the best man they have, that is no reason why they should work him to death. They don't consider him sufficiently. He gives in to them too much. He is not a machine."

"Perhaps he would come," said Patty, "but it would be against his judgment—it would be at a heavy cost to his country—it would be just to please us—oh, don't let us tempt him to desert his post, which no one could fill in his absence! Don't let us unsettle and disturb him at such a time, when he is doing so much good, and when he wants his mind kept calm. Wait for a little while; he might get away for Christmas perhaps."

"But by Christmas, I am afraid, you would be gone."

"Never mind. We see him in Melbourne. And we came here to get away from all Melbourne associations."

"Well, well, we'll see. But I am afraid you will be very dull with only an old fellow like me to entertain you."

"Dull!" they all exclaimed in a breath. It was just what they wanted, to be so peaceful and quiet—and, above all things, to have him (Mr. Brion, senior) entirely to themselves.