Chapter VI: Part 6

'How horrid you can be, Esther! It is the very fact that most men have so few strings to their nature that makes one so soon understand the sort of people that are different. I have for a long time thought that one of the greatest pleasures of life would be a real, great, lasting friendship. It takes so much to form a true one. There is, as a wise man says, in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise. Yet the part of us which is not a fool responds so gladly to the sane, enlightened strain of another mind. But it must be different from one's own. That is why the best friendships require the difference of sex.'

'How very sage and calm that sounds,' said Esther, with an amused expression. 'But, after all, what shoals there are! Most men and women are either married or expect to be.'

'And yet my pair of friends must be single or widowed. They must have an interest--and a deep one--in books, but still deeper in life itself, so that they are like the spectators of a play in which nothing can happen that has not some significance. Only life being so much greater, so much wider, and more complex than any picture of it can possibly be, it always strikes people--men and women especially--from opposite points of view.'

'You are quite convinced that your ideal friendship must be based not only on difference of sex, but dissimilarity of view? Well, you may be right, but how long would it last between two disengaged people? How many weeks would pass before that strong interest in books, and in the general play of human affairs, would be centralized?'

'Oh, Esther, you are too tiresome. Of course, that is the rock on which the ordinary friendship of an ordinary man and woman strikes--and it is odious--it is worse than disillusionment.'

'My dear, you have gone through the process more than once,' said Esther, a smile hovering round her lips.

'Yes; and the soft, silly look that comes into a man's eyes--the way in which he is perpetually on the look-out for some point of personal vantage--for the opportunity of paying some inane compliment--of course all that is the very antipodes of true unbiassed intercourse. Flattery is the lethal spot of friendship. It is the cryptogram for betrayal.'

'And yet I suppose friendship, like love, must be nourished by admiration to some extent.'

'Yes; but then love, or at all events, the thinglet that usually goes by that name, is always seeking its own ends, whereas friendship--well, it is a root of that divine severe force which constantly calls upon us to be true to our best capabilities. "No receipt openeth the heart, but a true friend to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession." And again, "The best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend." You know who says this?'

'Yes; but how rare such intercourse is between man and woman.'

'So it is, and that makes it all the more precious.'

'Well, if ever you form such a friendship, Stella, you must tell me; and do not conceal the end,' said Esther with a smile.

By this time the sun had set, and a light mist hung over the sombre ranges that stretched westward, giving them a mysteriously limitless aspect, as though they extended beyond the confines of the world. This impression was deepened by low masses of clouds driven before a rising wind. The outlines were so uncertain and broken, and the prospect so wide and lonesome and silent, that the whole formed a picture which for weird austerity could hardly be surpassed.

'I'll tell you what, you must live at Coonjooree, and ask me to stay with you, Esther,' said Stella. 'I am only just beginning to find out all the allurements of the place. Last night I watched the moon setting, and the look of the desert in the pale lessening light was indescribably solemn. The place seems to have been created to make up striking pictures that somehow make one in love with desolation.'

'And to carry a sheep to three acres--don't forget the sheep, Stella. Would you really come and stay here with me? But I confess I would be afraid of so much solitude. One must be either older or younger than I am for that. I think we had better set off on our travels, you and I and the children, and their governess----'

'Do you not find it chilly out there, my dears? There is such a charming fire of Mallee roots here,' said Mrs. Courtland, opening the window under which her daughters were sitting in the veranda.

The twilight was deepening, and the clouds were gathering more impenetrably. But within the quiet, warm little drawing-room, fragrant with the breath of violets, it was that charmed hour when the hearth 'smiles to itself and gilds the roof with mirth,' and it would be 'a sin to light the lamps as yet.' Some old writers speak of a substance called Babylonian naphtha, which is so inflammable that it kindles into flame if it is placed near fire without touching it. Old dry Mallee roots when split up have something of that quality. They are strangely twisted and gnarled, as if the waterless wastes in which they grew had thwarted and stunted them till they are fit emblems of a defeated existence. But when they break into flame, it is as though they pass into a brief life of ecstatic joy. No other wood makes so vivid and pure a fire. The flames are a delicate clear jonquil. The roots on the least touch flash into ardent, lustrous arrows of light, whose glow seems to warm the mind as well as the body.

The mother and her daughters sat round this glancing, softly brilliant fire, and talked of the past and future, of things that had been and that were to be, in the calm unapprehensive way which gradually returns even to those who have sustained many of the storms and shocks of life.

*CHAPTER XIX.*

Her brother was absent in Tasmania when Stella arrived in Melbourne. For the first two days nothing more noteworthy than drives and calls and invitations to coming festivities marked the hours. The 'smaller house' which the Tarelings had taken was in Toorak, 'one of our most fashionable suburbs, as I dare say even you may see,' Laurette said, as they drove by spacious mansions and large, well-kept grounds. Monico Lodge was not distinguished by these advantages. It had that irritating pretentiousness about it which takes the form of several large reception-rooms and diminutive sleeping apartments. When Stella entered her room she looked round it with a feeling of comical dismay. It seemed as though the walls were not far enough apart to enable her to breathe freely. As for the dressing-room, in which Maisie slept, the wardrobe filled it up so completely that the poor maid seemed to have been smuggled into the closet for some nefarious purpose. There was a conservatory devoted entirely to exotics and gardeners' plants, but there was no garden; and the 'grounds,' a most conventionally formed snippit of land, were chiefly adorned with trees which refused to grow, rooted in tubs that refused to be concealed.

But even more uncongenial than these surroundings was Laurette's constant society, with her unconcealed triumph at being in the thick of all that was most distinguished and fashionable in Melbourne, as she herself expressed it. When this triumph seemed on the point of being a little dimmed, she fell into transports of delight at the prospect of an indefinite stay in town.

'If Talbot had not made this lucky hit in mining shares, I could only have been here for a couple of weeks,' she said, 'what with the low price of wool and papa's fearful losses with the rabbits. He has given us a great deal of money from time to time, but he has turned very rusty of late. As for Ted, you might as well ask a doornail for money. I hope he will marry some nice girl soon who will teach him to despise filthy lucre a little.' This with a sidelong look at Stella, who laughed at this pious aspiration, but made no comment.

Everything jarred upon her so much that at first she could not even write a letter. The day after her arrival she sent a telegram to Coonjooree, proposing to write the next day. On the morrow she wrote a post-card. On the third day she scolded herself seriously, and sat down at her desk. She had only written the words, 'My darling Mother,' when she leant her head on her hand and went into a long reverie, during which a curiously wistful, softened expression came into her eyes. She was roused by a tap at the door.

'Are you here, Stella?' It was Laurette, and she wore an impromptu air of surprise. 'Guess who has come?' she said, with an arch smile.

'Oh, Cuthbert!' exclaimed Stella, her face radiant, as she hastened to join him.

'No; your brother cannot be here till the evening. It is Ted.'

Stella's face flushed, but it did not escape Laurette's keen gaze that with this deepening colour the sudden radiance of gladness died away.

'He is so delighted to find that you are here. I hadn't time to say three words when he sent me off for you. I must interview the cook about luncheon. You will find Ted in the breakfast-room.'

There was something in Laurette's tone and manner which Stella greatly resented; but it was, on the whole, easier to ignore this than call it in question.

Edward Ritchie met her in the hall, and took both her hands in his with so eager and impassioned an air that Stella instinctively stepped back and drew her hands quickly away, saying lightly, to hide her confusion:

'At last I shall know whether you have been in Egypt or Central Australia.'

'You look thinner than you used to, Stella,' said the young man, so absorbed in gazing at her that it seemed as though he heard nothing.

'And you--you have grown stouter. Yes, really, Ted, you remind one of the beauties in the Arabian tales.'

'Like the beauties! Oh, come now, Stella, draw it mild. What kind of beauties were they?'

'Oh, they used to have adventures. Sometimes they were put in a box, the box in a chest with seven locks on it, and placed at the bottom of the sea, beneath the roaring waves. Sometimes they were put in baskets sewn up with red thread. But whatever happened to them, they always turned up all right again, with faces like the moon in the fourteenth night.'

'So that's why you compared me to those beauties, Stella. Well, I couldn't believe you were paying me a compliment. But tell me now, are you glad to see me?'

'Oh yes, of course. But why do you always alight like a bomb? Is the wind from the east?'

'Oh, bother the wind! Tell me all about yourself. Have you been well all the time? I don't believe you have. You used not to have circles under your eyes; and they look bigger.'

'The better to see you with,' answered Stella, smiling.

The most obvious quotation, however, was always thrown away on Ted.

'But why are you not looking well?' he persisted.

'Well, you know, mother had a fever. But dancing is good for me; so I have come to stay with Laurette, that I may dance for weeks before going into the Bush.'

'How often will you dance with me, Stella?'

'Well, that depends; you used to waltz out of time. Have you had any practice during your travels?'

'What travels? You seem to think I have been gallivanting about amusing myself, whereas--oh, Stella, I barely know how to hold myself with joy for seeing you again. And, do you know, you hardly shook hands with me!'

'But if someone held your ten fingers in a vice, could you shake hands?'

'Well, give me your hand again; I will not hold it hard. Or, I'll tell you what, you just hold my hand about as tight as you wish me to hold yours. You see, I'm perfectly reasonable.'

'Thank you, Ted. The way I want you to hold my hand is not to touch it at present. We have a little Irishman who comes to work at Laracor, and I have learned to talk Irish, you see.'

Stella was sitting on a low chair near the fire. Ritchie stood over her, leaning against the mantelpiece. Carried away by a sudden impulse, he knelt down and held her hands to his lips. They were so hot that they seemed to scorch her fingers.

'Oh, but really, Ted, it appears to me that you are too absurd!' she said, the feeling of amusement with which this faithful squire usually inspired her struggling with a sense of growing discomfort.

'Do you remember the last time I saw you?' he asked, drawing a chair close beside her.

'I cannot speak to you, Ted, without twisting my neck. Do, please, go a little further off.'

'Oh, hang it all! Haven't I been far away long enough?'

He tried to hold her hands in his. She slipped away and took a chair opposite to him.

'Now we can talk comfortably,' she said. 'Tell me, have the rabbits eaten all your father's sheep, as Laurette says?'

'Do you remember how long it is since we parted?'

'We are just like two people in a burlesque,' said Stella, smiling. 'We fire off question after question without once answering each other.'

'Well, why don't you answer me, and sit down nearer to me, and be a little jollier?'

'But that is the point. I would not be at all jolly if I twisted my neck. Oh, I assure you it is much worse than spraining one's ankle.'

'Do you remember the day we parted so many months ago?' persisted Ritchie.

He was a man to whom rapid thought was impossible. But it was equally impossible to divert his mind from the point of view which was uppermost with him.

'Oh, heavens! yes. I remember everything,' cried Stella, with her low merry laugh--a laugh that always had a magical charm for her companion.

'You remember everything,' he repeated slowly. 'I am glad of that, for you know very well----'

He stopped abruptly. His eyes had been fixed on Stella's face intently, and he noticed that it grew cold and a trifle hard. The change made his heart heavy with apprehension.

'Yes; what do I know very well?' she answered, taking up the ravelled thread with an impatient weariness.

She felt that this long serio-comic wooing must end once for all. Then, as she noticed the agitated, breathless way in which Ritchie looked at her, an acute apprehension of all that this long courtship meant to him suddenly smote her, and therewith a pang of remorse as she realized how far she had somehow travelled from the old tolerant half-responsive standpoint, when she had decided that if she married anyone without being in love it must be Ted.

He looked at her for some minutes without speaking, and Stella knew it was because he feared to put the old question into words. She was always ready to see how faulty she was--ready to blame herself where blame was due. She was all the more conscious of any blame that might attach to her in this long intermittent wooing, because by some process which she herself could not have explained, the moment they met it became clearer to her that those fugitive resolves that she harboured from time to time after they last parted, of accepting Ritchie as her lover--her future husband--were, in truth, impossible--or, at least, possible only at some indefinite period--not now.

'Ted, I am very sorry,' she said humbly, after a pause.

'Sorry!' he echoed. 'Why are you sorry? I don't expect you to love me as I love you. It's not the way of girls--like you.' Ted would sometimes make running comments on herself and things in general that amused Stella. Speculations, theories and musings on things in general were quite foreign to his nature, while they were part of her daily atmosphere. And yet she was vaguely conscious that, one-sided as his point of view might be, it rested on contact with more sides of life than were open to her ken. 'If you'll--you'll only just put up with me at first, Stella, I'm willing to run the risk.'

'Oh, it isn't your risk I think of so much,' she answered, looking up into his face smilingly.

He was standing nearer to her again, leaning on the mantelpiece, pulling a large red rose asunder and letting the petals fall on her one by one.

'By the way, I heard Konrad jarred his knee--how is he?' she said, with rather a barefaced attempt at getting away from the subject.

'All right again. But I haven't been thinking much of horses lately. I've had other fish to fry.'

'What fish, Ted?'

'You--mostly.'

'Oh, Ted! To call me a fish, and speak of frying me, and pull that beautiful burning-red rose to pieces at the same time! Why, it had hardly opened, and roses just now are scarce.'

'What would you like me to do?'

'Why, let me see. I think, in this crisis of Australian history, every squatter should study how to exterminate rabbits and conserve water.'

'Confound the rabbits and conserving water! Look here, Stella, you always twist me round your fingers in this way.'

Stella held up her hands deprecatingly.

'What makes you say such dreadful things about my poor fingers?'

'Oh, you know very well what I mean. Time after time I've asked you to marry me, and said to myself, "Now I'll decide it one way or the other." But you turn it into a sort of joke. "What has put this funny notion of marrying into your head, Ted?" you say; or you hold up your fingers before I've said a word, and laugh, saying: "Now, Ted, when you knit your brow in that way it always means something spoony."'

'Oh, Ted! I never used that word--never!' cried Stella, laughing despite her efforts to keep serious.

'Well, it doesn't matter about one word. You know what I mean, don't you?'

'Yes, I know what you mean--and I feel I have been very much to blame.'

'No, you haven't,' retorted Ritchie almost roughly. 'You haven't been to blame; it's me who used to feel that I'd sooner be made a fool of by you than have any other girl throw herself at my head. I've drawn back as frightened as a wombat when you began to be serious. I wanted things to be the same, for fear I mightn't even come to see you from time to time. But everything must have an end. I'd like you to marry me on any terms--unless--you're not fond of anyone else?'

She did not reply at once, and the young man recalled the hints that his sister had thrown out at Godolphin House.

'Why don't you tell me?' he cried in a husky voice.

'No! But then I can imagine that I could love; and I think, before a woman risks marrying, she should. We have been friends so long, I will be quite frank with you. I have sometimes thought I could marry you since we last parted----'

'Oh, Stella, Stella! God in heaven bless you for saying that,' cried Ted breathlessly.

'But then, Ted, I have oftener thought I could not. I think that we should be a little more alike. It is such a frightful long time----'

'Not always. Some people die off before they're anytime married.'

'But it would be unwise to count on that form of happiness,' answered Stella; and then she gave way to an uncontrollable burst of laughter.

'And as for not being alike,' said Ted, who always enjoyed the girl's merriment even when not a muscle of his own face moved, 'why, there's not many fellows that would care to have their wives like themselves. And I would, perhaps, get a little bit like you after we married, Stella. We would have so much time together at Strathhaye--or we could travel, or whatever you liked.'

The door-handle was turned in an ostentatiously preliminary way, and then Laurette came in.

'Would you mind keeping away for a little longer, Larry?' said her brother; on which Laurette laughed in a knowing way, bowed, and disappeared.

'Oh! how could you, Ted? Laurette will imagine all sorts of absurdities.'

'She will imagine that we are getting engaged; and that's what's going to happen, Stella. You never could throw me off after all these years. You know that I love you with my whole heart and soul, don't you?'

'I believe that you love me a great deal more than I deserve. But try and put yourself in my place; think how different the thought of marrying me would be if you did not love me.'

'It's no use my trying to think that; I've loved you ever since I was that high,' said Ted, holding his hand four feet from the ground.

'Well, it goes to my heart to think of grieving you; but----'

'Don't, Stella--don't say it. You can't know what a God-forsaken good-for-nothing I'd be if you took away all hope from me. Let's stay as we are and think over it--get used to the thought that you are to be my wife.'

'Don't plead with me so much--it worries me. I feel as if I must give way; and that would be fatal. Do not interrupt me. You don't understand what a hatefully cold-hearted creature I feel when I get indifferent to people.'

'But you are not indifferent to me--not quite?'

'No, not now; but then I see so little of you!'

'Well, I wouldn't be always at home; don't think it. I'm away from Strathhaye sometimes for weeks; and when I'm there, I'm out most of the day. Well, you can laugh as much as you like, though I'll be shot if I can make out often what amuses you so much!'

'Well, you really are too original in some ways. You tell me that sometimes people die off early in married life, and that we would not see much of each other--all by way of encouragement.'

'Yes, because I'm trying hard to follow your lead; though, by Jove! it would go very much against the grain with me either to die or be away from you after we are married.'

'Heavens, you make my flesh creep when you talk as if it were an accomplished fact! There is one thing I want to say to you, Ted.'

'One thing?--say a thousand! Say so many that you will never be done till we are both old and gray-headed.'

'I must go away and write my letters if you are to be so foolish.'

'No, no--no, Stella; I'll be dumb as a sonnet. Tell me the one thing.'

'Those pearls that you left the day before you went away----'

'What about them? Don't you care for them?'

'They are very lovely; but wait a moment.'

Stella went to her room, and presently returned with the morocco case in her hand. On seeing this, Ritchie's face became very sombre.

'It was very kind of you to think of my birthday; only mind you must forget so tiresome an anniversary after I'm twenty-five. But you know I cannot take such a costly gift from you.'

'All I have is yours. Why shouldn't you take this? It's a horse-shoe, isn't it? You know that is for luck.'

He pressed the spring, and looked at the pearls.

'No; they are too superb to be given or accepted in a careless way. You must take them back, please: I did not even show them to anyone.'

'Take them back!' repeated Ritchie, his face flushing with vexation. 'What should I do with the damned thing?'

'Is it right for you to say that before me?'

'No; and I beg your pardon. But you should not vex me so much. You must keep them. Now, I've got to see my trainer at one o'clock, and after that to take a spin down to St. Kilda. But I want you to promise to come out for a ride with me to-morrow morning. I have the neatest, best-bred little colt for you that ever you saw. Now I can see you are trying to think of an excuse.'

'Indeed I am not. I shall be delighted to ride. The air here stifles one. I am only thinking how I shall be dragged to give an account of all these friendly rides and talks the next time the spirit moves you to have a "square understanding."'

'Well, you needn't think anything of the kind. You _have_ sometimes thought you could marry me. Why, Stella, I could live on that for a year. The last thing I do at night is to look at your picture. When I look at it to-night, I shall hardly be able to believe you said that. Now put both your hands in mine--I won't hurt them--and say, "God bless you, Ted," the same as you did in the Fairacre garden.'

She gave him her hands, and repeated the words with a little tremor in her voice, which thrilled him through and through with happiness. He held her hands very gently, and lifted them one after the other to his lips, and then he hurried away.

Stella threw herself into an arm-chair. For some moments she was buried in one of those profound meditations in which every faculty of her mind became absorbed in a tyrannous, compulsory looking-on at her own special span of the past as part of an unfathomable enigma. She was presently roused by Laurette's shrill voice.

So Ted had not even stayed to lunch? Oh, she made no complaint. She knew too well thai at certain times in a man's life sisters, in common with all the rest of the world, must take a back seat--look on like people in the pit of a theatre, who see as through a glass darkly, and see little.

Laurette's eyes fell on the pearls, and she uttered a little cry of delight.

'What a splendid jewel! Why, this looks like business, Stella! It's better to be born lucky than rich, after all.'

Laurette surveyed herself in the mirror of the over-mantel, and held the brooch under her chin admiringly. Then she fastened it in the lisse ruffling of Stella's dress. But Stella quickly unfastened it, put it into the case, and closed it with what Laurette mentally called 'a vicious snap.'

'It does not belong to me,' she said coldly, in answer to Laurette's look of amazed inquiry. 'It is meant for the young woman who has been born more lucky than rich,' she added, with a mischievous smile.

*CHAPTER XX.*

The Hon. Talbot Tareling was at this time absent at Banjoleena, a new gold-mine which had recently excited much attention. No form of work had ever attracted Mr. Tareling unless it was of a light, irregular nature, with a strong element of gambling. Hence, dabbling in mining shares was the one Australian industry he found tolerable. He made erratic excursions to mines from time to time, ostensibly for the purpose of getting the straight tip. This, as a rule, proved very disastrous; but lately Fortune had smiled on him. He long held shares in a mine which neither development nor sensational rumours could galvanize into popularity. By-and-by, however, there was an assay which yielded an enchanting result. Instantly a boom set in in favour of the Celestial Hill Mine. Its dingy branch office in a dingy back street in Melbourne was besieged by eager applicants for shares. Middle-aged women in rusty black; unsuccessful business men, who had long eschewed mining ventures, but had got tired of seeing idle, brainless clerks turning ten-pound notes into fifties; spinsters who had saved one or two hundred pounds by toilsome years of penurious saving; clergymen with families far in excess of their incomes; artisans who were weary of the faded simplicity of investments at seven and six per cent.--in a word, that numerous class with whom the longing to widen or enrich life takes the form of narrowing it--who are always preparing to live, but never begin--were especially to the fore in buying Celestial Hills.

It was so safe. It was no bogus concern. It had been worked for a long time, and now they had 'struck oil.' And here was the average: four and a half ounces to the ton; and everyone knew that half an ounce paid. Then scraps of paper would be produced, and rapid memoranda made, and eager faces flushed with excitement at the splendid percentage. It was while the results were at their best on paper that Mr. Tareling sold out nearly all the shares he held. A week afterwards they were not worth a withered fig.

Then ugly rumours began to circulate. When people are aching with the loss of money, slander seems to be a balm to the wounded spirit. The mine had been salted; a false balance-sheet had been drawn up; a clandestine lump of gold had been dropped into the smelting-pot. How was it, too, that the _intimes_ of the directors had sold out rump and stump? Mr. Tareling was one of these; but, like Pilate, he washed his hands in public. He still had all the shares that he originally held; the fact being that the bulk had been bought with his wife's money and in her name. He was supported in his innocence by Ozias, the son of Lazarus, popularly surnamed Judas. This man wrote to the press bearing testimony to the childlike faith which the Hon. Talbot Tareling still put in the Celestial Hill gold-mine. On which some people arched their eyebrows, and prophesied that if this scion of an ancient family had recourse to many more testimonials of this kind, his business career in Melbourne would soon be blocked. Naturally all this duplicity rendered Mr. Tareling still more wary. He upheld the practice of finding out whether a mine really existed before investing in it. Such a plan, as some of the brokers remarked, would upset any system of mining that had yet been in vogue.

Laurette, in the meantime, found the present in many respects the most beatific season she had ever passed in Melbourne. Her growing intimacy with the viceregal family more than realized her most ardent expectations. She was fast rising to that social eminence in which her dresses, opinions, and parties would form topics of eager interest among women who a short time previously had barely acknowledged her as an equal. If it were not for increasing money difficulties, her enjoyment would have been almost without alloy. But Ted's presence gave her a feeling of security. She vaguely felt that in some way she would turn it to account.

She went with him to the theatre on the evening that followed his arrival, and Stella anticipated the pleasure of a long _tete-a-tete_ with Cuthbert, who arrived that afternoon from Tasmania. Alas! it was not an unmixed happiness. What her soul feared had come to pass.

After the first greetings and inquiries were over, Stella fixed her eyes on her brother's face in an inquiring way.

'Cuthbert, you look very radiant. Has anything happened? But no--you came to me the first evening. I am still---- Oh, heavens! you are colouring up to the roots of your hair!'

'But, Stella dear, you misrepresent yourself. You know that you would be the first to congratulate me--to be glad with my gladness.'

'Now you are breaking it to me gently--Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Jews! Yes, I can bear it all. Is it the Rev. S. Carter's daughter?'

'You are a little witch! You pretended to tremble about these daughters before I ever thought anything about Dora, except what a charming girl she is.'

'As if that were not the Alpha and Omega of the infatuation that precedes marriage.'

'You little heretic! Oh, there is not much of a story, except that we are both perfectly happy. Dora went with her mother to Launceston a week before I did. We met frequently. The day before we left we went mountaineering with a few others. It was all settled before we returned. Mrs. Carter charged me with her kind love, and wishes you to come and spend a day, or as long as Mrs. Tareling will spare you. Can you come to-morrow? Well, the day after. Dora and I will call before twelve, so that you may see a little of her before you meet the whole family.'

Stella fell in with this arrangement with rather a disconsolate little look.

'And so you are "perfectly happy"? But don't smile too often, Cuth, or you will spoil the serious lines in your face I like so much. Let me look at you sideways. So that's the way one looks when one is first engaged. Ted is stouter than you are; I am afraid the joy of being accepted would quite ruin his profile.'

'You will love Dora, Stella. You cannot imagine what a darling she is--already quite fond of you. I have often shown her your letters, and she is quite charmed with them, except----'

'Ah, I was waiting for the cloven hoof "except."'

'Well, dear, she is very devout, and has the beautiful untroubled faith of childhood. She is vexed to think that you should be so uncertain, so----'

'So infidel--that's the ecclesiastical word.'

A look of pain came into the brother's face, and then, of course, Stella repented.

'I am horribly jealous, I know that,' she said. 'Lay a charm over me, Cuthbert; sprinkle me with holy water; beat a brass pan to drive the evil spirits away--but don't be cross with me.'

'Cross with you, Stella? Have I ever been that? Have I not loved you fondly ever since you were a dear, funny little baby, who would not let people lead you when you were a year old, but preferred all the bumps you got to being held by the hand?'

'Yes, my ownest boy, you have always been to me like a guardian angel. Oh, far better. Yes, let me be unorthodox while Dora isn't here. After all, a guardian angel keeps at a discreet distance, but you----'

To the girl's own astonishment she burst into tears. Her brother, it must be confessed, was rather pleased. He always a little dreaded the vein of hardness--of _diablerie_--of which the 'Satan letter' was so signal an example, that would at times become apparent in Stella. It clung to his mind at times like a superstition that, in a mood of angry defiance, or disgust, or impatience of the sweet inevitable humdrum of life, she might take some course which would lead to bitter misery, or, at the least, cloud and hamper the better possibilities of her nature. She was human through and through, but a mocking, ironical tone came to her over-readily. She wept very rarely, and when tears did come they became her wonderfully, and made her for a time adorably gentle. But it seemed this was not one of these occasions.

'Can you believe, my dear Stella, that my love for you will ever be less because of other ties? It seems to me rather that this new sweet love makes all other affection deeper and fuller.'

'Yes, dear, I know,' said Stella, smiling through her tears. 'It makes you feel like our Torrens after the winter rains.'

'No, I won't accept that comparison. You must think of a prettier one. Do I not know how the Torrens gets in the drought of summer? Do you believe that the leanness of dry December will ever overtake my love for you?'

'I know you will never be anything but what is dear and good. Still, it is quite evident to me that I must either get converted or married; and I fear of the two the latter is the more practicable. You see, dear,' she said in answer to a half-reproving smile, 'it is not to be endured that I should write or say anything which would vex Dora. So you and I can no longer be intimate friends. Oh, I know the atmosphere in which an _average_ clergyman's daughter is brought up. There is a standard for everything--there are so many clauses of a creed, so many articles to be believed. Then all the evil and misery and astounding chaos of life is made out to be a jumble between God and the devil and man's free-will. Sometimes it is one, sometimes the other--but the reputed Creator of all must never be blamed. And in the face of everything there must be an amazing kind of optimism--a thing that leads a precarious kind of existence by brigandage on the understanding, by injecting minute doses of morphia into the pores of reason. Judge how many letters of mine could be anything but a snare and a grief to one who has been saturated with that way of thinking.'

'My dear, you must not talk like that,' he said, taking her slim, fair hands between his brown, vigorous ones. 'If I did not know you so well I should be afraid you and Dora would not get on. But you rail against most people theoretically, and end by charming all--as you certainly will charm this dear new sister who is to be.'

'You speak as though a sister were a kind of rare exotic to me, Cuthbert. Don't forget that I already have six. Yes, certainly I must always count myself, and this, with Hector and Claude's wives, makes up the unromantic half-dozen--then Dora seven. Did you know that the sacredness of the number seven was fast rooted in the pre-Semitic civilization of Babylon?'

'I know that you are sometimes the most whimsical monkey under the sun, and that to this day I don't always know when you are in fun or in earnest.'

'I am in earnest now, Cuth. I wish you every joy and blessing. Yes; now I have got over the first shock. To-morrow I shall be glad that you are happier; the day after that I shall begin to love Dora. God bless you, Cuthbert!'

She kissed her brother on the forehead, on each cheek, and on the lips--an old form of embrace which she had instituted in token of reconciliation after their rare quarrels in the old childish days.

'I wonder,' said her brother, after a pause, 'when I shall have to congratulate you under the same happy circumstances?'

'Now, if you like, dear, leaving out the happy,' she said solemnly.

'Is Ritchie in town?'

'Yes; he came to-day, and to-morrow morning I go a-riding with him on the trimmest little colt in the world.'

This ride took the form of going to Brighton and a delightful gallop by the seaside, during which the colour leapt into Stella's cheeks with charming vividness, while her eyes seemed to imprison rays from the glancing sparkles of light on the softly-moving waves. Ted could scarcely take his eyes off her face. He longed to say a hundred things, but seeing that she was disinclined to talk, he also kept silent.

It was almost pathetic to notice how implicitly he responded to her moods as far as lay in his power. He did not understand her veiled irony, her bookish allusions, her sudden sparkling merriment at those 'trifles light as air' which touch the keen edges of a mind fully alive to the incongruities of life. But he understood when she wished to be silent or talk, when she wanted to hear about his horses, and when the wonderful bay colt, who promised to surpass all previous records, became intolerable to her.

Before turning homeward they paused at a little headland. The waves, crested with foam, broke against this in rollicking tumbled masses. There was a breeze fresh enough to ruffle the sea surface, so that the waves stretching out to the vast horizon curled here and there into foam, and broke on the shore with a long-drawn shuddering cadence, which was momentarily lost, and yet rose again, making itself distinct from the deeper symphony of the multitudinous waters far off. There were voices in the sea that morning which made Stella's heart beat as if she were listening to passionate music. Singly and near at hand the waves lisped and prattled; but altogether and far off, what solemn and terrible strength, what possibilities of sudden irretrievable shipwreck! Did they symbolize the Mount Tabors and Gehennas that darkly lurk within the human soul--its inappeasable longing for happiness--its certainty of storms and sorrows?

'A few moments here are worth a month of stupid Melbourne drawing-rooms, incessantly mimicking other mimicries,' said Stella, taking off her hat, so that the ozone-laden breeze might sweep away the tags and knots of tiresome thoughts that would thrust themselves between her and the sunshine.

'How long are you going to stay with Laurette?'

'Oh, I hardly know. You see, I must be several weeks at Lullaboolagana, and I want to get back to Adelaide before the spring is over.'

'I hope to be in Adelaide, too, before the spring is over. Shall I come first to Fairacre?'

'Oh yes! I am sure mother and all will be very glad to see you.'

'Won't you?'

'Yes--certainly; but as a friend, mind.'

'Do you know I was quite cut up when I heard there was some talk last year of your leaving the old place.'

'Were you really, Ted? Why?'

'Well, you know, I spent many a happy holiday there. Cuth and I don't chum much now, somehow, but we were very good friends at St. Peter's, though he was always miles ahead of me.... Do you remember the day we walked up to the weir, and you crouched for half an hour behind a rock watching two mountain ducks or some other comical little brutes that paddled about in the water? ... Do you remember showing me the head of a bull-dog ant through a microscope? By Jove! I can't imagine how they make a few glasses tell such thundering lies! ... I believe I remember the first time I saw you--when you were four. Then you came with your mother to stay for a week when you were eight years old. You climbed up to the top of a she-oak tree with me, and told me you liked me ever so much better than Laurette.'

'Now then, Ted!'

'Honour bright you did! You were the jolliest little trump of a girl I ever saw. You played leapfrog with me, and tore the lace of your pinafore. You didn't want anyone to see it, so I got a needle and thread and helped you to sew it. I ran the needle into my finger to the bone. I remember it well, because I went to St. Peter's the next Monday, and my thumb was swollen. I wrote so badly they put me into pothooks and hangers. We used to have Latin every day, and spelling once a week. I never took to Latin, and I hated spelling, and even if I liked it, five lines of dictation once in seven days wouldn't make a literary character of a chap. I'm rather weak in spelling to this day, as I dare say you notice when I propose to you from time to time. I always get my book-keeper to write my business letters.'

'Yes. I suppose that's easier than to learn to spell?'

'Oh, much! You see, it's in this with me like everything else. Once I make up my mind to a thing I can't alter it. And it seems I generally make up my mind wrong in the spelling line. But I say, Stella, do you remember that birthday I got a little sparrow without many feathers on it in your Moreton fig-tree? Oh, I can see you do. I asked you to give me a kiss for it, but you wouldn't. When will you?'

'Have you bribed many girls since then to kiss you, Ted?'

A dull red mounted into Ritchie's face.

'That isn't the question--stick to the point in hand, Stella, and tell me.'

'Well, perhaps never. Indeed, most likely never.'

'I don't believe that. Count it on your left hand as we used to do with the cherry-stones. Begin with the thumb, saying, "Shall I ever give Ted a kiss?--yes--no": go on.'

'Shall--I--ever--give--Ted--a--kiss? Yes--no--yes--no!'

'No, no, no; that's not fair, Stella. You must stop with the little finger, and the dear little finger says yes. I shall get a diamond hoop for that little finger. Now, then, ask it when this is to come off: say spring--summer--autumn--winter. Spring, hurrah! exactly when I thought.'

'This is a charming horse of yours, Ted.'

'Yes, I've had him trained on purpose for you. I thought he was about the style of horse you would like.'

'Now I think of it, you always get into this sort of carnival when we come out riding. I don't think I shall come with you again.'

'Don't say that, Stella. You must come for rides in the morning as long as you are in town; and when I go back to Strathhaye I shall almost believe you are coming. When shall I see you there, Stella?'

'Ted, you are far from amusing when you keep on harping on the same string in this way. It is about time we turned back. We are going to lunch with some of Laurette's prize hens to-day. It would be rather nice to play the truant.'

'Lord! Stella, don't tempt me in that way, or I shall really carry you off. Yes--no--yes. Don't you hear it in the horses' hoofs? Spring--summer--autumn--winter. Spring: it's as plain as a pike staff. You never look half so jolly anywhere else as you do on horseback. We shall spend our honeymoon on horseback--part of it, at least. Oh, I can't help it, Stella! You get into my head when we come out riding. Say a sonnet to me, and it will take my spirits down. "Where is the ship to which yon land must go?"'

Of course Stella laughed at this unconscious travesty, and the absurd memories it revived; and Ritchie, seeing her laugh, was wise enough to say nothing more that would recall the dreadful threat that she would not ride out with him again. Before they parted she had promised him three dances at a ball to which they were going that night.

*CHAPTER XXI.*

'You and Ted must have had a very pleasant ride,' said Laurette, a little maliciously, as they drove to the Anstey-Hobbs mansion.

'Yes, the sea and the air were delightful,' answered Stella calmly.

'If you keep that charming colour, Mrs. A.-H. will fall in love with you on the spot. Since reading some book or other she is quite enthusiastic about healthy, well-developed girls--especially if they combine what she calls a rare organization with dabbling in the fine arts. You don't model in clay, or paint, or sing, do you?'

'No; I'm like the cat with one trick; my one accomplishment is reading.'

'Still, I fancy you'll take with my Melbourne friends. Why do you laugh?'

'You made me think I must be cow-lymph or a new shade of ribbon. What do people have to do when they take?'

'Oh, sit in a corner and try to be as good as little Jack Horner. Do you know, Stella, it strikes me that you are more spoilt than ever. I suppose it comes from your being the youngest, as Tom says.'

'It is awfully good of you to make excuses for me,' said Stella, with a heightened colour.

Mr. Anstey-Hobbs was popularly credited with being a millionaire. Certainly the surroundings and appointments of his town house gave colour to the belief, not to mention the number of idle servants who hung about the place. 'Just like an English nobleman's house,' as a governor from one of the adjacent colonies had said--a saying which some of Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs' friends treasured up and repeated to select circles of their friends' friends, basking in the reflected glory of a viceregal compliment respecting an abode in which they were so much at home. As for Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs herself, she never repeated anything that savoured of vain-glory. Indeed, one would imagine at times that wealth was quite a mortification to her. She would take precautions to have scores upon scores of callers on her reception-days, and then take a bosom friend aside, who entirely believed in her and had an incontinent tongue, and say, 'Ah, my dear, how are we to cultivate our minds as we should, when we are swallowed up in social maelstroms like this?' And so, when she donned a specially magnificent visiting dress--one of Worth's highest flights--indicating yet chastening the possession of wealth, she would sit in a remote corner of her carriage, with a melancholy air, as if she were bowed down with the thought that all is vanity and vexation of spirit. And then, in talking to her friends at such times, the words 'our terrible climate' and the 'severe limitations of colonial life' were often on her lips.

'It is sordid wealth without culture or the traditions of refinement that stifles our artists and poets,' she would murmur, as if shoals of such gifted beings were annually offered up on the altar of Mammon--the fact being that Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs had a talent for assimilating ideas from the books and magazines she read in such numbers monthly, but had not an equal felicity in their application. The thought that wealth was detrimental to mental expansion was one which had from various sources become dear to her--so much so, that about this time Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs had made a determined effort to put down, as far as possible, the overwhelming power of money in Melbourne society. She had struggled to establish a salon--a weekly gathering to be open only to people of culture and esprit. Those who had neither, asserted that the line must certainly be drawn at Mr. Anstey-Hobbs, but habitues of the salon said it was drawn at those who were neither amusing nor had made any contribution to art or literature. But then a liberal interpretation had been put upon the latter term, for among the gifted beings at the first reunion was a wealthy young squatter, a neighbour of Ritchie's, who was by no means amusing, and had never been suspected of wandering on the slopes of Parnassus. On inquiry, however, it turned out that a year previously he had written a letter to the Melbourne _Argus_ on 'Fluke in the Liver of Sheep.'

The luncheon-party at which Stella made her debut in Melbourne society, as Laurette grandiloquently phrased it, was made up of ten women in all, supplemented by two young men, who stole furtive glances at each other, and at first spoke chiefly in monosyllables. According to the hostess, one was a poet, the other a painter. Stella sat at Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs' right hand, the painter at her left. Some funny talk went on about allegory.

'Well, Mr. Vincent, I still think that your first idea of representing Australia as a wood-nymph, with an opossum-skin thrown carelessly over her shoulders, was exquisite,' said Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs.

'That may be, dear madame'--Stella found that this was the title by which young souls, touched with the sacred fire of genius, and therefore admitted to the salon, addressed the hostess--'that may be; but are our public educated up to the point of reading this allegory? I lay it down as one of the canons of art that a picture must tell its own tale. Now, the tale that would be conveyed by the figure in its first inception would be that it was not Australia, but a young black woman.'

'But suppose you introduce a kangaroo on one side and an emu on the other?'

'There would be two objections. The introduction of these typical animals would strengthen the aboriginal theory with one class, and afford an element of mockery to another.'

'Of mockery? surely not! Abandoned as our so-called newspaper critics may be--and, alas! we have no higher standard for leading the masses to sweetness and light--they would never dare to sully with their profligate satire so pure and original a conception!'

'You have hit the very point. That is exactly what they would do, madame. The figure of a young female inadequately clad, with a bewildered-looking kangaroo on one side and a nerveless emu on the other, suggests nothing so much as an exhibition trophy of colonial wine and olives. You know the _banal_ and _borne_ tone of newspaper judgment.'

'Ah, you have so much penetration, such marvellous insight into the envious writhings of inferior natures!' murmured Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs, gazing at her 'painter' with pensive admiration. 'Indeed, I doubt whether the very strength of your analytical judgment does not stand in your way as a great creative artist.'

Mr. Vincent blushed with pleasure, but still maintained a gloomy frown, as became an artist who had to bear the burden of genius in a world beset with inappreciative masses and unilluminated critics.