Mentally, Deb compared the cool, flower-petal cheeks of her Breen nieces with her Goldsworthy nephew's mouth, covering those unpleasant teeth. It would have been fairer to compare him with her Breen nephews, but there the contrast would have been nearly as great. John, at business with his father, and Pennycuick, learning station management with the Simpsons at Bundaboo, had the fresh and cleanly appearance of all Rose's children; in physical matters they were as clean as they looked. Bob did not look unclean, but with all his excessive smartness, he looked unfresh. That look, and the thing it meant, were his father's legacy to him.

At last Deb reached her sister's room. It was another addition to the ever-growing house, and marked, like each former one, the ever-growing prosperity of the shop supporting it. The fastidious travelled eye appraised the rich rugs and hangings, the massive "suite", the delicately-furnished bed, and took in the general air of warm luxury and unstinted comfort, even before it fell upon Rose herself—Rose, fat and fair, and the picture of content, sitting in the softest of arm-chairs, and the smartest of gowns and slippers, by the brightest of wood fires, with a tableful of new novels and magazines on one side of her, and a frilly cradle on the other.

"My husband may be a draper," she had remarked at various times, "but he does give me a good home."

Deb, so long homeless amid her wealth, conceded at this moment, without a grudge, that Rose's humble little arrow of ambition had fairly hit the mark.

They embraced with all the warmth of the old Redford days. A few hasty questions and answers were exchanged, and their heads met over the cradle.

"You poor child!" Deb exclaimed, as a matter of form. "Haven't you done with this kind of thing yet?"

"Oh," said Rose, "I should feel lost without one now. And we wanted another boy—we have only three, you know. Isn't he a darling?"

Number eleven, fast asleep, was fished from his downy bed and laid in his aunt's arms, eagerly extended for him. His clothes might have been woven by fairies, and he smelt like a violet bed in spring.

Strange thrills—sharper than those that Nannie had set going—shook Deb's big heart as she cuddled and kissed him.

"The older I get," she confessed, "the greater fool I am about a baby. And you do have such nice babies, Rose."

"Yes," simpered Rose. "They ARE nicer than most, certainly—I'm sure I don't know why." Her eyes gloated on the white bundle; she fidgeted to get it back. "Ah, Debbie, I wish—I wish you knew—"

"I know you do, my dear," laughed Deb, a little queerly, and she returned the baby in order to hunt for her handkerchief. "And if you must know the truth, so do I. It's tantalising to see you with more than your share, while I have none—and never shall have, worse luck! Well"—blowing her nose cheerfully—"it's no use crying over spilt milk, is it? And I tipped the can over myself, so I can't complain. How's Peter?"

Rose told her how Peter was—"so dear, so good"—and then had so much to say about the children, one by one, through all the eleven of them, that it was quite in a hurry at last that Deb disclosed her secret. And Rose not only sustained no shock—which would have been bad for her—but could see nothing in the marriage worth fussing about, except the fact that it came too late for a family. Such a sordidly domestic person was she! She mourned and condoled over this spilt milk—so sure that poor Deb was but hungrily lapping up drops with the dust of the floor—that Deb grew almost angry. She took back her own words, and said she was glad there were no children to come between her and her husband, who needed only each other. She implied that this union had a higher significance than could be grasped by a mere suckler of fools (nice fools, no doubt) and chronicler of small beer (however good the brew). She believed it, too. Love—great, solemn, immortal Love, passionate and suffering—was a thing unknown to comfortable, commonplace Rose, as doubtless to Peter also. They were dear, good people, and fortunate in their ignorance and in what it spared them; but it was annoying when ignorance assumed superior knowledge, and wanted to teach its grandmother to suck eggs. Was it come to this—that marriage and a family were synonymous terms? No, indeed, nor ever would, while intelligent men and women walked the earth. Deb reserved the more sacred confidences for Mary's ear. Mary had loved—strangely indeed, but tragically, with pain and loss, the dignified concomitants of the divine state. Mary would understand.



CHAPTER XXVII.

Mary's house was a chill and meagre contrast to that of Rose, but there was nothing cold in Mary's welcome. To Deb's 'Darling! darling!' and smothering embrace of furs, the slim woman responded with a grip and pressure that represented all her strength. Deb, although not the eldest, was the mother of the family, as well as the second mother of Bob.

"Where is he?" were Mary's first words—and Deb smiled inwardly to see her as absurd in her mother's vanity and preoccupation as Rose herself. But this was a case of a widow's only son, and the visitor was thankful for such a beginning to the interview. "Where is he?" cried the anxious voice. "He was to have met you. And he never fails—this is not like him—"

"Oh," Deb struck in easily, "he was there all right, looking after his old aunt like a good boy. He wanted to bring me, but I told him he could be more useful looking after Rosalie and my things. I thought we'd rather be by ourselves, Molly—poor old girl! You know I never heard a word until he told me just now. Your letter did not reach me."

They kissed again, in the passage of the little house.

"You will send away the carriage, Debbie?" Mary urged, without visible emotion. "There are stables in the next street. You will take off your hat and stay with me a little?"

"Indeed I will, dearest, if you will have me. Are you alone?"

"Quite alone."

"Where's the old lady?"

"Oh, dead—dead long ago."

"And Ruby?"

Mary looked confused.

"Ruby? Ruby is—don't you know?—an actress in London. Doing very well, they tell me—"Miss Pearla Gold" in the profession."

"Gracious! Why, I've seen her! Burlesque. Tights. The minx! Well, she must be coining money, anyhow. I hope she doesn't forget to make some return for all the trouble she has been to you."

"She forgets everything," said the step-mother, "and we are thankful for it. Bob hates the thought; it is hard on him, who is so different. Don't allude to it before him, please; he feels it too keenly. Debbie, what did you think of my boy?" "Oh, splendid!" was the cordial response. "I could hardly believe my eyes."

"Is he not?" the fond mother urged. "And it is not only his appearance, Debbie—they say he is the cleverest lawyer in Melbourne. He is so learned, so acute! He has a practice already that many a barrister, well known and of twice his age, might envy."

The pale woman—for her bricky colour had faded out—thrilled and glowed.

"Yes, he told me," said Deb; "and it was good hearing indeed. But I always knew what he had in him.' To herself she said: 'Why, if he is so well off, does he let her live like this?"

Poverty—though decent poverty—proclaimed itself in every detail of the mean terrace-house, which stood in the most depressing street imaginable. It made the wealthy sister's heart ache.

"And how are you yourself, Debbie?" Mary remembered to ask, as she shut the door upon the departing carriage. "You look well. How is Francie? We want you to tell us all about her grand doings. Bob is greatly interested in his Italian aunt; he thinks he would like to take a vacation trip to see her some day. By the way, did he tell you that Rose has another? Isn't she a perfect little rabbit? And quite delighted, Keziah says."

As she talked in this detachment from her personal affairs, she led the way up bare stairs to her small bedroom. The resplendent woman behind her took note of the widow's excessive thinness, the greyness of her straight, tight hair, the rigid lines of a black stuff gown that had not a scrap of trimming on it—not even the lawn sleeve-bands widows use—and thought of Bennet Goldsworthy's old-time annoyance when his wife was proved to have fallen behind the mode. And as she expatiated upon the charms of Rose's eleventh baby, Deb's bright dark eyes roved about Mary's room, in which she recognised a few of the plainer furnishings of the nuptial chamber of the past.

But not a trace of the person who had been so much amongst them once. His boots on the floor, his clothes on the door-pegs, his razors and brushes on the toilet-table were gone; so were a basin and ewer from the double wash-stand; so was the wide bed. In place of the latter a small one—originally Bob's—had been set up, at the head of which lay one large pillow fairly glistening with the shine of its fresh, although darned, linen sheath. Carpet and curtains, essential to the departed housefather, had disappeared; the bare windows stood open to what fresh air there was; the floor, polished, and with one rug at the bedside, exhaled the sweet perfume of beeswax and turpentine. It was all so pathetic to the visitor, so eloquent of loss and change, that she exclaimed, catching her sister in her arms:

"Oh, you poor thing! You poor, poor thing!"

Mrs Goldsworthy returned the embrace tenderly, but not the emotional impulse.

"You are so dear and kind," she said, in a gentle, but quite steady voice. "I am so glad you came—so thankful to have you; but we won't talk about that, if you don't mind. I think it is best not to dwell on troubles, if you can help it. Tell me about yourself. I suppose you have had lunch? Well, then, we will have a nice cup of tea. Take off that heavy cloak—what lovely fur! And your hat too—what a smart affair! You always have such taste. No, I am not wearing crape; it is such rough, uncomfortable stuff, and so perishable; and the rule is not hard and fast nowadays, as it used to be. It would be stupid to make it so in a climate like this. Do you want a comb, dear? How brown your hair keeps still! Then let us go downstairs to the fire."

The fire was in a little bare parlour, as austerely appointed as the bedroom. A tea-table was drawn up to the hearth, the kettle placed on the coals. There seemed no servant on the premises, but the neatness upstairs was repeated below; everything was speckless, polished, smelling of its own purity. Well, it was a good thing poor Molly could interest herself in these matters, and her resolve not to brood over her troubles—if it was genuine, and not only a heroic pose—both noble and wise. So Deb reflected; and such was the calmness of the emotional atmosphere, the cheering effect of tea and rest and sisterly companionship, the discursiveness of the talk, that she soon found herself telling Mary the secret that she was so sure the widow would hear with special sympathy and understanding.

"It is awfully selfish," she began, "to bother you with my affairs at such a time as this, but you've got to know it some time. The fact is—some folks would say there's no fool like an old fool, and perhaps you'll agree with them; but no, I don't think you will—not you, for you know...the fact is—don't laugh—but I'm sure nobody can help it—I have been and gone and got married, Molly. There!"

And, after all, it seemed that she had not come to the right place for sympathy and understanding. Mary did not laugh, but she stared in a wooden manner that was even more hurtful to the feelings of the new wife.

"Well?" she cried brusquely, after a painful pause. "Is there any just cause or impediment that you know of? You look as if you thought I had no business to be happy like other people."

"Oh, if you are happy! But I am so surprised. Who is it?"

"Guess," said Deb.

"I could not. I haven't an idea. Some Englishman, of course."

Deb shook her head.

"European, then? Some prince or count, as big as Francie's, or bigger?"

Deb wrinkled a disdainful nose.

"It is no use, Moll; you would not come near it in fifty tries. I'll tell you—Claud Dalzell."

"What—the deadly enemy!" This time Mrs Goldsworthy did laugh. Deb joined in.

"Funny, isn't it? I feel"—sarcastically—"like going into fits myself when I think of it, it is so screamingly absurd. And how it happened I can't tell you, unless it is that we are fallen into our dotage. I suppose it must be that."

"You in your dotage!" Mary mocked, with an affectionate sincerity that was grateful to her sister's ear. "You are the youngest of us all, and always will be. Do you ever look at yourself in the glass? Upright as a dart, and your pretty wavy hair—so thick, and scarcely a grey thread in it! Of course, I don't know how it may be with him; I have not seen him for such ages—"

"Oh, he is a perfect badger for greyness—not that I ever saw a badger, by the way. And he walks with a stick, and has dreadful chronic things the matter with him, from eating and drinking too much all his life, and never taking enough exercise. Quite the old man, I should have called him a few months ago. But he is better now."

Mrs Goldsworthy gave a little shudder, and her unsympathetic gravity returned.

"I see," she sighed. "Your benevolent heart has run away with you, as usual. His infirmities appealed to your pity. You married him so that you might nurse and take care of him—"

"Not at all!" Deb broke in warmly. "And don't you talk about his infirmities in that free-and-easy way; he is no more infirm than you are. Did I say he was? That was my joke. He always was the handsomest man that I ever set eyes on, and he is the same still. No, my dear, I have not married him to take care of him, but so that he may take care of me. I'm lonely. I want somebody. I've come to the time of life when I am of no account to the young folks—not even to Bob, who would not give me a second thought if I was a poor woman. No, Molly dear, it is no use your pretending; you know it as well as I do. And quite natural too. It is the same with all of them. Nothing but money gives me importance in their eyes. And what's money? It won't keep you warm in the winter of your days—nothing will, except a companion that is in the same boat. That is what I want—it may be silly, but I do—somebody to go down into the valley of the shadow with me; and he feels the same.' Something in Mary's face as she stared into the fire, something in the atmosphere of the conversation, drove her into this line of self-defence. 'Oh, there is no love-making and young nonsense in our case—we are not quite such idiots as that comes to; it is just that we begin to feel the cold, as it were, and are going to camp together to keep each other warm. That's all."

Mary remained silent.

"Well, I must go," said Deb, jumping up, as if washing her hands of a disappointing job. "The carriage must be there, and Bob will be starving for his dinner. No use asking you to join us, I know. But you must come to Redford soon, Molly—or somewhere out of this—when you feel better and able. You shall have rooms entirely to yourself, and needn't see anybody. I will come tomorrow, and you must let me talk to you about it."

Mrs Goldsworthy was stooping to sweep a sprinkle of ashes out of the fender—she was like an old maid in her faddy tidiness—and when she turned, her face was working as if to repress tears. Deb caught her up, a moan bursting from her lips.

"Oh, what a brute I am! when you—poor, poor old girl!—have to finish it alone. But, darling, after all, you have had the good years—a child of your own—a home; we shall get only the dregs at the bottom of the cup. So it is not so very unfair, is it?" Then Mary's pent emotion issued in a laugh. With her face on her sister's shoulder, she tried herself to silence it.

"I can't help it," she apologised. "I would if I could. Debbie, don't go! Oh, my dear, don't think I envy you! Don't go yet! I want to tell you something. I may never have another chance." "Of course I won't go—I want to stay," said Deb at once.

And she stayed. The coachman was dismissed to get his meal, and instructed to telephone to Bob to do the same. The sisters had a little picnic dinner by themselves, washing up their plates and dishes in the neat kitchen, Deb insisting upon taking part in the performance, and sat long by the fireside afterwards. Fortunately, although the season was late spring, it was a cold day; for the clear red fire was the one bit of brightness to charm a visitor to that poor house. It crackled cosily, toasting their toes outstretched upon the fender-bar, melting their mood to such glowing confidences as they had not exchanged since Mary was in her teens. No lamps were lighted. The widow was frugal with gas when eyes were idle; her extravagant sister loved firelight to talk in.

But for a while it seemed that Mary had nothing particular to communicate. Deb did not like to put direct questions, but again and again led the conversation in the likely direction, to find Mary avoiding it like a shying horse. She would not talk of her husband, but interested herself for an hour in the subject of Guthrie Carey, Guthrie's wife, his child, his home, discussing the matter with a calmness that made Deb forget how delicate a one it was. Then Mary had a hundred questions to ask (probably on Bob's account) about the Countess, of whom she had known nothing of late years, while Deb had learned something from time to time, and could give an approximately true tale. Quite another hour was taken up with Francie's wrongs and wrong-doings, as to which Deb was more frank with this sister than she would have been with Rose.

"It is no use blinking the fact," she said straight out, "that Francie is no better than she should be. I can't understand it; no Pennycuick that ever I heard of took that line before. She has a dog's life with that ruffian, no doubt; and of course the poor child never had a chance to enjoy the right thing in the right way—though that was her own fault—"

"I don't think," Mary broke in, "that ANYTHING is ANYBODY'S fault."

"That's a most dangerous heathen doctrine, my dear, but I'll admit there's something in it. Poor Francie! she was born at a disadvantage, with that fascinating face of hers set on the foundation of so light a character. She was too pretty, to start with. The pretty people get so spoiled, so filled with their own conceit, that they grow up expecting a world made on purpose for them. They grab right and left, if the plums don't fall into their mouths directly they open them, because it gets to be a sort of matter of course that they should have everything, and do exactly as they like."

"And the plain ones—they are born at a worse disadvantage still."

"No, they are not. Look at Rose. Francie, with her gilded wretchedness, thinks Rosie's lot quite despicable; but I can tell you, Molly, she is the most utterly comfortable and contented little soul on the face of this earth. She would not change places with a queen." "But Rose is not plain. Rose is the happy medium. And THEY are the lucky ones—the inconspicuous people—the every-day sort—"

"What's luck?" Deb vaguely moralised. "I suppose we make our luck. It doesn't depend on our faces, but on ourselves."

"Ah, no!" Mrs Goldsworthy received the well-worn platitude with a laugh. "We don't make anything—we are made. It is just a dance of marionettes, Debbie. Poor puppets of flesh and blood, treated as if they were just wood and nails and glue! Who set us up to make a game of us like this? Who DOES pull the strings, Debbie? It is a mystery to me."

Then Deb waited for what was coming next.

"Possibly it will be cleared up some day," she murmured, putting out her strong, beautiful hand to touch her sister's knee. "Whether it is a fairy tale or not, one must cherish the hope—"

"Not I," Mary cut in swiftly—that same Mary who was once conspicuous in her family for pious orthodoxy. "No more experiments in human existence for me! A few years of peace and cleanness, as I am—as I now am—I hope for that, and for nothing more; I don't want anything more—I'd rather not. To be let alone for the rest of the time, and then to be done with it—that sums up all the hope I have, or need."

"Ah, my dear—"

"No, Debbie, don't look at me with those eyes—don't pity me in that tone of voice. I am only a heathen against my will—not so broken-hearted as not to care what happens to me, which I believe is what you think. I am not even sorry—I wish I was, but I can't be; in fact, I am so happy, really, that I am going about in a sort of dream, trying to realise it."

"HAPPY!"

"Perhaps 'happy' is not the word. I should say unmiserable. I am more unmiserable than I have ever been, I think, since I was born."

Deb's swift intelligence grasped the truth. "Ah, then she was not so insensate as we thought!"—but made allowance for what she diagnosed as a morbid condition of mental health.

"Are you happier than you were at Redford—young, and loved, and with everything nice about you—?"

"Yes. Because then, although, of course, I did have everything, I had no idea of the value of what I had. You can't be really happy unless you know that you are happy. I did not know it then, but now I do."

Deb's glance flashed round the poor room, and out of the window into the squalid street; she thought of Bob, who almost openly despised the mother who adored him; she calculated the loneliness, the poverty, the—to her—ugliness of the existence which Mary's "as I am" was intended to describe; and she groaned aloud.

"Oh, my dear, was it really so awful as that—that the mere relief from it can mean so much to you?"

"I am not going to complain," said Mary. "It was not awful by anybody's fault—certainly not by his. He did his best; he was really good to me. It could not have happened at all, except through his being good to me—doing what he did that night. I am not in the least bitter against him; he was as he was made just as I am. It had to be, I suppose. The maker of the puppets didn't care whether we belonged or not; the hand that pulled the strings, and tangled them, jerked us into the mire together anyhow—" "Oh, don't!" pleaded Deb. "Don't blaspheme like that! What is religion for if not to keep us from making blunders, and to help us to bear it when they are made—and to trust—to trust where we cannot see—"

Deb was unused to preaching, and broke down; but her eyes were sermons more impressive than any of the thousands that Mary had heard.

"Some day," said Mary, "when I get into a place where I cannot hear religion spoken of, nor see it practised, I may learn the value of it. I hope so. I have a chance of it now—the way is clear. I am through the wood at last."

Deb drew her filmy handkerchief across her eyes.

"Yes, I know." Mary smiled at her sister's grief. "But it is only for this once, Debbie dear. I did want to let you know—to have the delight of not being a liar and a shuffler for once. I shall not say such things again. I am not going to shock anybody else, for Bob's sake. Bob, of course, must be considered; after all, it was his father. None of us, even the freest, can be a free agent altogether; I understand that. I shall hold my tongue. The blessed thing is that that will be sufficient—a negative attitude, with the mouth shut; one is not driven any longer to positive deceit, without even being able to say that you can't help it. Oh, Debbie, you have been a free woman—why, why didn't you keep so?—but with all your freedom, and all your money, you don't know the meaning of such luxury as I live in now."

Deb gazed at her sister's rapt face, glowing in the firelight, and wondered if the brain behind it could be altogether sane.

"To call that HAPPINESS!" she ejaculated, with sad irony and scorn.

"If you must fix a name to it—yes," the widow considered thoughtfully.

"After all, 'unmiserable' does not go far enough. I AM happy. For, Debbie"—turning to look into the dark, troubled eyes—"I'm clean now—I never thought to be again—to know anything so exquisitely sweet, either in earth or heaven—I'm clean, body and soul, day and night, inside and outside, at last."

"Oh, POOR girl!" Deb moaned, with tears, when she realised what this meant.

"Rich," corrected Mary—"rich, dear, with just a roof and a crust of bread."

"Well," said Deb presently, "what about that roof and crust of bread? Since we are telling each other everything, tell me what your resources are. Don't say it is not my business; I know it isn't, but I shall be wretched if you don't let me make it mine a little. How much have you?"

"I don't know. I don't care. I haven't given money a thought. It doesn't matter."

"But it does matter. You can't even keep clean without a bathtub and a bit of soap. But what am I thinking of?—of course, you will settle all that with Bob."

The little word of three letters brought Mrs Goldsworthy down from her clouds at once.

"Oh, no!" she cried quickly, almost fearfully. "On no account would I interfere with his arrangements, his career. He would do everything that was right and dutiful, I am sure, but I would sooner starve than take charity from my own child. But there's no need to take it from anybody. I have all I want."

"How much?"

"I couldn't tell you to a pound or two, but enough for my small wants."

"They do seem small, indeed. Where are you going to live? Won't you come to me, Molly? Redford is big enough, and it's morally yours as much as mine. You should have your own rooms—all the privacy you like—"

"No, darling—thank you all the same. I have made my plans. I am going to have a little cottage somewhere in the country, where there is no dust, or smoke, or people—where I can walk on clean earth and grass, and smell only trees and rain and the growing things. Alone? Oh, yes! Of course, I shall see you sometimes—and my boy; but for a home—all the home I can want or wish for now—that is my dream."

"I don't think," said Deb, "that I ever heard human ambition—and happiness—expressed in such terms before." It was the final result of Mary's experiment in the business of a woman's life.

Deb drove back to her hotel, thoughtful and sad and tired. When Rosalie had left her for the night, she wrote to Claud by way of comforting herself. She told him what she had been doing—described her interviews with Rose and Mary respectively, and the impressions they had left on her.

"Of all the four of us," she concluded her letter, "I am the only one who has been fortunate in love. I found my mate in the beginning, before there was time to make mistakes—the right man, whom I could love in the right way—and we have been kept for each other through all these years, although for a long time we did not know it. And now we are together—or shall be in a few days—never to part again. It is the only love-story in the family—I don't except Rose's, because I don't call that a love-story—which has had a happy ending."



CHAPTER XXVIII.

Down the middle of the big T-shaped wool-shed, in two rows of six pens each, with an aisle between them, the bleating sheep were massed. They had been driven into that aisle and thus distributed, as a crowd of soldiers might be packed into their pews at church, and twelve little gates had then been shut upon them. Each gate had a corresponding one at the opposite end of the pen, opening upon a broad lane of floor, and facing a doorway into outside pens and the sunny paddocks of the background. Between gate and door, on his own section of the boarded lane, a sweating, bare-armed man with shears performed prodigies of strength and skill. Every few minutes he snatched a heavy sheep from the pen beside him, flung it with a round turn into a sitting posture between his knees, and with the calm indifference to its violent objections of the spider to those of the fly that he makes into a parcel, sliced off its coat like a cook peeling a potato. The fleece gently fell upon the floor, as you may see an unnoticed shawl slip from an old lady's shoulders, and before it could realise what had happened, the poor naked animal found itself shot through the doorway, to stagger headlong down the sloping stage that was its returning path to freedom. Twelve of these stalwart and strenuous operators, lining the long walls at regular intervals, six a side, were at it with might and main (payment by results being the rule in this department of industry), and attendant boys strolled up and down, picking the fleeces from the floor and carrying them to the sorter's table. One was the tar-boy, whose business it was to dab a brushful of tar upon any scarlet patch appearing upon a white under-coat where the shears had clipped too close. The sorter or classer stood behind his long table, above and at right angles to the lines of sheep-pens and shearers. Near him on either hand were racks like narrow loose-boxes, built against the walls; behind him the hydraulic press cranked and creaked as its attendants fed and manipulated it, and the great bales, that others were sewing up, weighing, and branding, were mounting high in the transepts of the building—the two arms of the capital T. The air was thick with woolly particles and the smell of sheep; the floor was dark and slippery, and everything one touched humid with the impalpable grease of the silky fleeces circulating all about the shed. Strict, downright, dirty business was the order of the day.

The manager—Jim Urquhart, grey-bearded, in a battered felt hat and a slouchy old tweed suit—stood by the sorter's table, his wide-ranging, vigilant eye suddenly fixed upon it. As each fleece was brought up, shaken out, trimmed, tested with thumb and finger, rolled into a light bundle, inside out, and flung into one or another of the adjacent racks, he followed the process as if it were something new to him. The shade of difference in the texture of the staple of one fleece as compared with another appeared of more concern to him than the absolute difference, which seemed to shout for notice, between Deborah Dalzell and the other features of the scene.

A snowy, lacy petticoat all but swept the greasy floor. An equally spotless skirt, fresh from the laundry, gathered up in one strong pendant hand, gleamed like light against its background of greasy woodwork and greasy wool. The majestic figure of the lady of Redford advanced towards him. Her lord strolled behind her. Often—but not for many a long day—had the vision of her beautiful face come to Jim in this fashion, a radiance upon prosaic business that it was not allowed to interfere with; now, for the first time, his eye avoided, his heart shrank from recognising it.

Then he lifted his gaze at last, for she was close beside him. And what a ray of loving old-comradeship shone on him from those star-bright orbs of hers, undulled by the years that had lightly frosted her dark hair. She put out her hand, and held it out until he had apologised for his greasy paw, and given it to her warm grasp.

"Why haven't you been to see me—to see us?" she asked him, smiling. "Didn't you know we came home last night?"

"I thought you might be tired—or unpacking," Jim lamely excused himself. "But whenever it is convenient to you, Deb—Mrs Dalzell—I am always close by; I can come at any time."

He looked at her husband.

"Claud, you remember Jim?"

It was so many years since the men had met that the question was not uncalled for. They nodded to each other, across the enormous gulf that separated them, while Deb explained to her husband what an invaluable manager she had. Jim had grown homelier and shabbier with his advancing years; Claud more and more exquisitely finished, until he now stood, in his carefully-careless costume—his short, pointed beard the same tone of silver-grey as his flannel suit, his finely-chiselled features the hue of old ivory—a perfect model of patrician 'form'. Only there was plenty of vigour still manifest in the bushman's bony frame, while the man of the world wore a valetudinarian air, leaning on the arm of his regal, upright wife.

"Eh, isn't it like old times!" she mused aloud, as her eyes roamed about the shed, where every sweating worker was finding time to gaze at her. "I see some of the old faces—there's Harry Fox—and old David—and isn't that Keziah's grandson? I must go and speak to them."

She left her husband at the sorter's table, that he and Jim might get reacquainted—men never learned to know each other while women were in the way—and it seemed to them both a long time before she came back. Claud asked questions about the clip, and other matters of business; and he criticised the manager's management.

"Rather behind the times—isn't it?—for a place like Redford. I thought all the big stations sheared by machinery now."

"I've only been waiting for Miss—Mrs Dalzell's return to advise her to have the machines," said Jim, scrupulous to give Deb's husband all possible information.

"We must have them, of course. I believe in scientific methods."

Mr Dalzell did not ask Jim how his sisters were, and how his brothers were getting on—did not remember that he had any. And when Deb came back, to be gently but firmly ordered out of that dirty place by her new lord and master, the latter failed to take, although he did not fail to perceive, the hint of her eyes that Jim should be asked to dinner.

"No," said he, linking his arm in hers as they left the shed, "no outsiders, Debbie. I want you all to myself now."

And the words and tone were so sweet to her that she could not be sorry for the possible hurt to Jim's feelings. She was young again today, with her world-weary husband making love to her like this. That theory of their having come together merely to keep each other warm on the cold road to the grave was laughingly flung to the winds. She laid her strong right hand on his, limp upon her arm, and expanded her deep chest to the sunny morning air.

"Oh, Claud! Oh, isn't it wonderful, after all these years! You remember that night—that night in the garden? The seat is there still—we will go and sit on it tonight—"

"My dear, I dare not sit out after sunset, so subject as I am to bronchitis."

"No, no, of course not—I forgot your bronchitis. This is the time for you to be out—and this air will soon make another man of you, dear. Isn't it a heavenly climate? Isn't it divine, this sun? Look here, Claud, we've got some capital horses—or we had; I'll ask Jim. What do you say to a ride—a long, lovely bush ride, like the old rides we used to have together?"

Words cannot describe the pang that went through her when he shook his head indifferently, and said he was too old for such violent exercise now.

"Stuff!" she cried angrily.—

"Besides, I haven't been on a horse for so long that I shouldn't know how to sit him," he teased her lazily. "You wouldn't like to see me tumble off at your hall door, before the servants, would you?"

"Oh, Claud! And to think how you used to ride!"

But of course she knew this was a joke, and laughed it off.

"It's nothing but sheer indolence," said she, patting the hand on her arm—that shapely ivory hand, with its polished filbert nails—"and I see that my mission in life is to cure you of it. Come, we will make a start with a real country walk."

She began to drag him away from the bowered homestead, but he planted his feet, and took his hand from her arm.

"Not now, Debbie," he objected gently, but with that subtle note of mastership that had struck so sharply into Jim's sensitiveness; "it is mail-day, and the letters will be at the house by this time."

"What do letters matter to us?"

"That we can't tell until we see them."

They went in out of the sunshine to their arm-chairs in the shade. The English mail had arrived, and it was very interesting. Letters from lords and ladies, piles of papers of fashionable intelligence, voices from that world which one of the pair had already begun to hanker to be back in, although not yet distinctly conscious of it. The bride fetched her work-basket, and busied herself with a piece of useless embroidery, while the bridegroom read aloud to her passages from the epistles of his titled correspondents, and from the printed chronicles of their doings here and there. She had dreamed of his reading again the sort of things that he used to read, while she sewed and listened; but in the life that he had lived and grown to there had been no room for learning and the arts. He had dropped them, with his health and his horsemanship, long ago. The coroneted letters and the MORNING POST occupied them until luncheon.

At luncheon, as at every other meal—despite the new husband's expressed desire to have his wife to himself—his valet was present as butler, watching over the dyspeptic's diet, and seeing that the wine was right. Neither master nor man trusted anybody else to do this. It was a large crumple in Deb's rose-leaf, Manton's limpet-like attachment to Claud, who seemed unable to do anything without his servant's help, and the latter's cool relegation of herself to the second place in the MENAGE. It was all very well for HER to give her husband the premier place—she did it gladly—but for Manton to take possession of Redford as a mere appendage of his lord's was quite another matter. It was still the honeymoon, and he might do as he liked—or rather, as Claud liked; but it was not difficult to foresee the day when the valet who dictated to her cook would become too much for the proud spirit of the lady of the house, with whom it had ever been dangerous to make too free—or to foretell what would happen then.

Claud dozed through the afternoon—like most idle and luxurious men, he drank a great deal of wine, which made him sleepy—and Deb took the opportunity to go all through her house and put everything in order. They met again at tea, and had a stroll about the garden, arm-in-arm and happy. Dinner was a rather silent function. Deb wished for Jim, and regretted her easy abandonment of him; Claud never talked when he was eating—the business was too serious, and Manton was there. But while her husband smoked over his coffee, serene and charming, she sat alone with him, revelling in his wit and gaiety, telling herself that he was indeed the splendid fellow she had always thought him.

Then they went up to the big drawing-room—he was used to big rooms—and he flung himself at full length upon one of the downy couches, and she put silk pillows under his head.

While she was doing it, he pulled her down to him and kissed her.

"It's nice, isn't it?" he murmured in her ear.

For answer, she pressed her lips to his ivory brows and his dropped eyelids. Her big heart was too full for speech.

"Now I am going to play to you," she whispered, and went off to the old piano, that the tuner had prepared for this sacred purpose.

What years it was since she had cared to touch piano keys! And never since the love-time of her youth had she played as she did now—all the old things that he had ever cared for, with the old passion in them....

And while she played—he slumbered peacefully.

* * * * *

Jim, when his day of hard work was over, went back to his manager's house—all the home he knew—had a bath, put on clean clothes, ate perfunctorily of roast mutton, and bread and jam, and sat down with his pipe on the top step of his verandah, where he hugged his knees and watched the stars come out. He was a confirmed old bachelor now, "set", his sisters said, in his bachelor ways. None of them lived with him, to keep his house and cheer him up. It was too dull for them (with the mistress of Redford never there), and besides, he did not want cheering; for himself, he preferred dullness. An old working housekeeper "did" for him, cooking his simple meals—eggs and bacon alternating with chops for breakfast, and mutton and bread and jam for his tea-dinner, with a fowl for Sundays—keeping his few plain rooms clean and his socks mended. A hundred or two a year must have covered his household expenses; the hundreds remaining of his handsome income went to shore up the weak-kneed of his kindred, who had the habit of falling back on him when their funds ran out, or anything else went wrong with them.

He was a great reader. Books lined the walls of his otherwise meagrely furnished rooms—they represented the one personal extravagance that he indulged in—and newspapers and magazines came by every mail. In these and in his thoughts he lived, when not intent upon the affairs of the estate, which in the eyes of some appeared wholly to absorb him. Tonight his thoughts sufficed. The latest parcel from Mullens' lay untied, the new American periodicals with wrappers intact. Deb was home again—that was enough food for the mind at present.

But, oh, what a home-coming! His own and only "boss" no longer, as heretofore, but subject to a husband who clearly meant to be his master, and as clearly meant him to have no mistress any more. Neither in the way of business nor in the way of sentiment could she be again to him what she had been throughout his life—the altar of his sacrifice, the goddess of his simple worship, his guide, his goal. He must not hope, nor try, nor even long for her now. That one last comfort was taken from him.

Well!...

He walked about, while the fiercest paroxysm racked him. As some of us in our pain-torments rush to lotion or anodyne, he sought the soothing of the starry night, the cool darkness that had so often brought him peace. To get away from the faintly audible tinkling of the shearers' banjo and their songs, he strolled in the opposite direction, and that was towards the dark mass of the trees encircling her house—her home, in which he had no part. Mechanically he noted a garden gate open—she had left it so—open to the rabbits against which its section of the miles of wire-netting fencing the grounds had been so carefully provided, and he went forward to shut it. Being there, he had a distant view of the big drawing-room windows, thrown up and letting out wide streams of light across the lawn. And while he stood to gaze at them, picturing what within he could not see, he heard the piano—Debbie playing.

And so she had an appreciative audience, although she did not know it. Below her windows, out of the light, Jim—poor old Jim!—sat like a statue, his head thrown back, his eyes uplifted, tears running down his hairy, weather-beaten face. It was the most exquisitely miserable hour of his life—or so he thought. He did not know what a highly favoured mortal he really was, in that his beautiful love-story was never to be spoiled by a happy ending.

THE END