Here Rachel, feeling all her body like one great beating heart, moved away to the door, driven by a stern sense of social duty.

Her companion did not follow her, and she paused on the threshold, turned round, and then suddenly hurried back to him.

"Mr. Dalrymple," she said, putting out her hand with an impulsive gesture, "do not wish you had gone to Queensland instead of coming here to-night. If you do I shall be _miserable_!"

He seized her hand immediately, and stooping his tall head at the same moment, brushed it with his moustache. Then, looking up into her scared face, he said--like a man binding himself by some terrible oath:

"_That_ I never will."

Once before in that room they had touched the point where not only mere acquaintance but warmest friendship ends. Then it had been to her a new, incomprehensible experience; now she could not help seeing the reason and the meaning of it, though, perhaps, not so clearly as he.

In a moment she had drawn her hand away, and like a bird frightened from its nest, had vanished out of his sight, leaving him--thoroughly aroused from his normal impa.s.siveness--gazing at the empty doorway behind her.

When they met again, ten minutes afterwards, it was in the drawing-room, which was crowded with people; and through all the crush and noise, she was as acutely conscious of his presence as if he alone had been there.

She moved about with tremulous restlessness and downcast eyes; afraid to look at him--afraid he should look at her; paying her little civilities mechanically, and conducting herself generally, to her aunt's extreme annoyance, more like a bashful schoolgirl and a poor relation than ever.

Mr. Kingston, doing his best to fascinate Miss Hale, who stood beside him, giggling and simpering and twiddling her watch-chain, looked anxiously at his little sweetheart when she entered, thought he saw signs of his own handiwork in her disturbed and downcast face, called her to him, and until the great tea-dinner was over, and they all had to disperse to dress, compa.s.sed her with devout attentions, intended to a.s.sure her of his royal forgiveness and favour.

But he did not remove the prohibition, which made her more and more resentful as she continued to think about it, and less and less responsive to his ostentatious "kindness;" and he treated Mr.

Dalrymple--when he condescended to acknowledge his presence at all--with a supercilious rudeness that Mr. Thornley, in conjugal confidence, declared to be "very bad form," and that prompted the gentle Lucilla to be "nicer" to the younger man than Rachel had ever seen her.

He was so open in his hostility that it was generally noticed and talked of (and the cause of it more or less correctly surmised).

The only person who seemed absolutely indifferent to it and to him was Mr. Dalrymple himself; and in his secret heart he was much more glad than angry to have earned such p.r.o.nounced dislike from such a quarter, though as impatient of what he called "impudence" as anybody.

That Adelonga ball was a memorable event to most of the people that it gathered together--as what ball is not? Mr. Thornley celebrated the coming of age of his son and heir, to begin with. Mrs. Thornley appeared for the first time, "officially," after the birth of her baby, who was the hero of all occasions to _her_, and inaugurated a great "county"

reputation as a charming hostess and woman.

Mrs. Hardy got her best point lace irretrievably ruined by catching it on an unprotected corner of the wire-netting upon which Rachel had worked her decorations; and she also saw the lamentable frustration of several wise plans that she had made.

Two young people became engaged; others, male and female, fell in love, or began those pleasant flirtations which led to love eventually.

Miss Hale on the other hand, quarrelled with Mr. Lessel, who took upon himself to object to her extravagant appreciation of Mr. Kingston's rather extravagant attentions; and their engagement was broken off.

Mr. Lessel at the same time captivated the fancy of a charming young lady, only daughter of the Adelonga family doctor, resident in the township close by, who was destined in less than twelve months to be his wife.

Mr. Kingston, surfeited with b.a.l.l.s, had a deeper interest in this one than in any of the hundreds that he had attended in the course of a long and gay career.

Never before had he admired a pretty woman with such ferocious sincerity as he admired his little Rachel to-night; never before had he used such rude tactics to make the object of his affections jealous--thereby to subdue rebellion in her; never before had he been so defied and circ.u.mvented by a being in female shape as he was to-night by this presumptive little n.o.body, whom he had singled out for honour, and who was bound to honour him, and his lightest wish.

As for Mr. Dalrymple and Rachel--they must be cla.s.sed together in this catalogue of special experiences, for they shared theirs between them--the Adelonga ball marked a new and very memorable departure in the history of their lives. For half the evening they danced decorously apart.

Mr. Dalrymple justified Mrs. Thornley's expectations, of course, and distinguished himself above all the dancing men a.s.sembled; Rachel, who had had but little teaching, was a dancer by nature and instinct, as light and effortless, as airy and graceful as a bit of wind-blown thistle-down.

She loved it, as she loved all pleasant and poetic things; and though she could not have the partner she wanted, and had to take whom she could get, she felt to-night, and more and more as the evening wore away, that she had never heard and felt, in the strains of mere senseless instruments and in the thrill of responsive pulses, music of mundane waltzes and galops of such inspired and impa.s.sioned beauty.

There was a young artist from Melbourne who played lovely airs on a violin to a piano accompaniment, and he seemed literally to play upon her, spiritually sensitive as she was to-night to the lightest touch of that divine afflatus which makes poetry of certain pa.s.sages in the most prosaic lives.

Now rapturously happy, now tragically miserable, and tremulously fluctuating up and down between these two extremes, she was blown about like a leaf in autumn wind by the subtle harmonies of that magical violin. At least she thought it was the violin. We know better.

At about twelve o'clock she went into the house on an errand for Lucilla, and came back by way of the conservatory, as the first bars of a Strauss waltz were stealing through the fern-roofed alleys, with nameless tender a.s.sociations in every liquid note.

For a few seconds she paused in the shadowy doorway, a slight, white figure against the dim background, with hair like a golden aureola, and milk-white neck and arms--a gracious vision of youth and beauty as prince could wish to see.

But the Sleeping Princess now was acutely wide awake; the life that ran in her quickened pulses was almost more than she could bear. Her eyes shone restlessly, her breath fluttered in her throat, her heart ached and swelled with some vague, irresistible pa.s.sion, as the waves of that delicious melody flowed over her, like an enchanter's incantation.

A few paces off, within the ball-room, Mr. Dalrymple stood with his back to the wall watching her; his dark face was lit and transfigured with the same kind of solemn exaltation. She turned her head, and they looked at one another, mutually conscious of the supreme moment that had unawares arrived.

He held out his hand--she almost sprang to meet him; and then, oblivious of betrothals, and promises, and houses, and diamonds, she floated down the long room, under the very noses of her aunt and Mr. Kingston, lying in a reckless ecstasy of contentment in her true love's arms.

CHAPTER IV.

AFTER THE BALL.

Whatever might have been Rachel's confusion of mind as to the nature and consequences of her escapade, Mr. Dalrymple, from the moment that he took her in his arms, understood the situation perfectly. It was sufficiently serious to a man in his position, who, whatever his faults, was the soul of honour; but it was never his way to dally with difficulties, and he left himself in no sort of suspense or uncertainty as to how he would deal with this one.

Whether right or wrong, whether wise or foolish, in any sudden crisis requiring sudden choice of action, he obeyed his natural impulse, subject to his own rough code of duty only, without an instant's hesitation, and followed it up with unswerving determination, totally unembarra.s.sed by any anxiety as to where it might lead or what it might cost him, or as to any ultimate consequences that might ensue.

In nine cases out of ten a man of honour, placed as he was now, would have regretted an unconsidered act of folly, and have cast about for means of extricating himself and the girl who was behaving badly to her affianced husband from the position into which it had led them--even, perhaps, to the extent of using

"Some rough discourtesy To blunt or break her pa.s.sion."

But he was the one man in ten who, equally a man of honour, felt himself under no obligation to do anything of the kind. If she loved him--and now he knew she did; if he loved her, or was able to love her--and he allowed himself no doubt upon that point from this moment of her self-revelation, though he had not _meant_ to permit anybody (least of all a mere child like this) to supplant the dead woman on whom the pa.s.sion of his best years had been spent--then the thing was settled.

They might waltz together till daylight, and no one would have any right to interfere.

The social complications that surrounded them, and which a conventional gentleman would have considered of the last importance, were to him mere matters of detail. They must manage to get out of them as best they could.

So he carried her round and round the room, the most perfect partner he had ever danced with, who moved so sympathetically with all his movements that she might have been his shadow--but for the electric current of strong life that her hand in his, and her light weight on his shoulder, and the subtle sense of her emotion, sent thrilling through his veins; and in the teeming silence his brain was busy making rapid plans and calculations for effectively dealing with the many difficulties that would come crowding upon both of them as soon as this waltz was over.

Clearly, the first thing to do was to dispose of ambiguities between themselves.

"Come into the conservatory," he said, in a quick under tone, when five silent, delicious minutes had pa.s.sed; "I want to say something to you before these people begin to spread all over the place again."

But even as he spoke, as if a spell had been broken, the light and rapture died suddenly out of her face, her limbs relaxed, her airy footsteps faltered, she seemed to melt away in his arms.

"Oh," she whispered, looking up at him with tragic eyes, full of fear and despair, "how wicked I have been! What _will_ he say to me?"

"Never mind _him_," replied Mr. Dalrymple; "you must not let him have any right to dictate to you any more--you must break off your engagement at once, and get out of his hands. Wicked!--the only wicked thing would be to deceive him any longer. You _know_ you don't love him. Come into the conservatory, and let us talk about it. _Do_ come--there is n.o.body there now!"

But Rachel, being a woman, and a coward, and only eighteen years old, would not come. She knew what she wanted, but she dared not do it--she dared not even think of it.

"I must not--I must not!" she protested, in a childish panic of terror.

"Let me go, Mr. Dalrymple, _please_--I have done very wrong--I am afraid to stay----"