"How on earth is that?"

"Oh, a species of shyness like your own, which makes you talk freely of Dawn and Ada Grosvenor, because you have no particular interest in them, whereas there is some name you guard jealously from me," I cunningly replied.

"Is it true that Miss Dawn is engaged to Eweword? If she is let me know in time to send her a wedding present. I'd like to, because she's your friend," he said with such elaborate unconcern that I had difficulty in suppressing a smile. His step-brother, the dilettante, would never have been so clumsily transparent in a similar case.

"Nonsense; she's as much engaged to you as to him," I said rea.s.suringly, and that was all that pa.s.sed between us on that subject.

He energetically confined our conversation to the lovely odour from the lucerne fields we were pa.s.sing on the river-bank, but I was not surprised that the afternoon's post brought Dawn a letter that smothered her in blushes, and plunged her in a gay abstraction too complete for either Uncle Jake or Andrew to penetrate.

When we were once more in our big room, commanding a view of the Western mail with its cosy lights twinkling across the valley, she extended me the privilege of perusing one of the simplest and most straightforward avowals of love from a young man to a maiden it has been my delight to encounter.

"DEAR MISS DAWN,--You will be very surprised at receiving such a letter from me, but I hope you will not be offended.

I have loved you since the first day I saw you, but have kept it so well to myself that no one has suspected it, perhaps not even yourself. Will you be my wife? I love you better than life, and am willing to wait any number of years up to ten, if you can only give me hope of eventually winning you. I do not expect you to care for me at once, but if you can give me hope that you do not dislike me I shall be content to wait. You are so beautiful and good, I am afraid to ask you to marry me, but I would try hard to make you happy, and being in a position to live comfortably, you could continue any studies you like." Here followed a most business-like and lucid statement of his affairs, and the ending--"Please do not keep me waiting long for a reply, and let me know if I am to interview your grandmother. I am sure I can satisfy her in regard to my position and antecedents.--Yours devotedly,

"R. ERNEST BRESLAW."

He was honest. Not fearing that his income might tempt a girl of Dawn's or indeed any other's station, he had in no way attempted to test her affection ere mentioning it. After the manner of his type--one of the best--he would place complete reliance where he loved, and feel sure of the same in return.

"Good heavens! has he really all that money?" she exclaimed.

"So I believe."

"I'd be able to live the life I want, then. Learn to sing, have lovely dresses, and travel about. I'm not thinking only of his money, but don't you think people who marry on nothing are fools and selfish? A woman who marries a man who is only able to keep her and her children in starvation is a fool, and a man who wants a woman to suffer what wives have to, and drudge in poverty, is a selfish brute--that's what I've always thought. As for ga.s.sing about love when there's no comfort to keep it alive, that's about as foundationless as we, always being supposed to think men our superiors, even the ones a blind idiot could see are inferior."

"Are you going to marry him?"

"I want to, but what on earth am I to do with 'Dora' Eweword?"

"Break his heart to keep Ernest's together?"

"Break _his_ heart! It's the style to break, isn't it? He can have Dora Cowper or Ada Grosvenor, they both want him. If grandma got wind of the situation though, she'd put my pot on properly. She'd carry on like fury, and let me have neither of them--that would be the end of it. I can't make out why I fooled with that 'Dora' at all. I'll write and ask Ernest to give me a week;" and with her characteristic prompt.i.tude she sat down, and favoured a style as unadorned as that of the knight himself.

"DEAR MR ERNEST,--Your letter received. I care for you, but cannot give you a definite answer at once. There may be obstacles in the way of accepting your kind offer; if you will give me a week to consider matters, I will answer you definitely then.--Yours with love,

DAWN."

As she got into bed she said with a happy giggle, "He says he loved me from the first day he saw me, and you thought he only came to see you!"

"Well, my dear, you can't expect people whose hearts are broken from over-work, and whose hair is grey from want of love, to be as quick as beautiful young ladies whose affairs have come to a happy head with a splendid young knight;" and what I inwardly thought was, that at all events I had discovered the knight's symptoms long before he had done so.

"Would you like Mr Ernest and me to marry?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't object," I laconically replied.

"Well, I'll marry him as soon as ever he likes if I can get rid of 'Dora.' I'll see 'Dora' and see if I can do it without a rumpus first, but if he hasn't got sense to be quiet, well, I won't give in without a fight. Ernest mightn't like it if he knew, but I bet he will have to keep dark about worse things on his part if I only knew,--he's different to ninety-nine per cent of men if he hasn't," she said as she opened the French lights wider to the crisp breath of scented night and blew out the lamp.

"You don't mind his hair being red now, do you?" I maliciously inquired in the darkness, and though she feigned sleep I knew that owing to a delightful wakefulness another beside myself heard the splendid music of the trains that night. The style of her breathing told that she was still awake some hours later when the old moon climbed high and came shining, shining down the valley, divided in two by its n.o.ble river, and laid out in orchard and agricultural squares.

The great silver light outlined the glorious hills that walled the west away from the little towns and villages, and here and there a gleaming white cl.u.s.ter of tombstones bespoke the graveyards where slept the early pioneers and the folk who had followed them, and which one by one, as opening buds or withered stalks, were settling their last earthly score. The little homesteads lay royally, peacefully free from danger of molestation amid their wealth of trees and vines.

Cottages raised on piles, and vain in the distinction of small protruding gables, pretentiously called bay windows, and with keys rusting for want of use in the cheap patent door-locks, were quickly superseding the earlier dwellings. These squat old cots generally had thresholds higher than the floors; their home-made slab doors knew no fastening but a latch with a string unfailingly on the outside day and night, and with their beetling verandahs and tiny box skillions, were crouchingly hard set upon the genial plain.

TWENTY-SIX.

"OFF WITH THE OLD."

Dawn was not a procrastinator, so she lost no time in sending Eweword a message to meet her next night at eight at the corner of the Gulagong Road for the purpose of a private talk.

She was going to take something to Mrs Rooney-Molyneux and the baby as an excuse to be abroad at that hour of the night, and requested me to accompany her, so that she would not be saddled with Andrew as protector. We set out immediately after tea, and had time for a chat with Mrs Rooney-Molyneux about her son. Both were enjoying good health, thanks to the opportune arrival of a well-to-do sister, and the fact that, in honour of an heir to his name, the father had lately abstained from alcoholic drinks, and made an occasional pound by writing letters for people.

We had some trouble to dissuade him from escorting us home, but emerged at last without him, and within a few minutes of eight o'clock.

The cloudless, breezeless night, though a little chilly, was heavy with the odours of spring and free from the asperity of frost. The only sounds breaking its stillness were the trains pa.s.sing across the long viaduct approaching the bridge. The vehicles which met from the two roads--the Great Western, leading in from Kangaroo, and the Gulagong, coming from the thickly-populated valley down the river-banks--had gone into town earlier for the Sat.u.r.day night promenade, and we practically had to ourselves the broad highway, showing white in the soft starlight.

I walked behind Dawn, and she, having found Eweword, who had been first at the tryst, they came back towards the river a few hundred yards and stopped behind some shrubbery, while I took up a place on the other side of it, as directed beforehand by this very business-like young person, to act as witness in case of future trouble.

"Well, Dawn, what has turned up?" said the young man after a pause.

"There's something that might explain the situation better than a lot of talk."

Claude, alias "Dora" Eweword, struck a match, and upon discovering the fragments of his engagement-ring in the piece of paper she had handed him, was silent for a minute or two, and then said--

"Dawn, so you want it to be all off. I knew that this long while, and have been mustering pluck to say so, but it seems you have got in before me."

"Perhaps you were going to say you were pulling my leg like you did with Dora Cowper?"

"No, I was not," and his tone was exceedingly manly. "I was going to say that, much as I care, I'd rather let you go free than hold you to your agreement when I saw you didn't care for me."

"You were mighty smart!"

"No, I'm only a dunce, but even a dunce can liven up sufficiently when he's in love to see whether his sweetheart cares for him or not, and you didn't take much pains to hide the state of affairs," he said with a rueful laugh. "I know enough about girls to know when they really care."

"Practice, like," said Dawn.

"You can say that if you like," he gravely replied.

"Well, things were rather mixed, but now I know what I want."

"And that you don't want me?" he interposed.

"Well, you can marry Ada Grosvenor or Dora Cowper."

"We can leave that to the future; it doesn't enter into this question at all," he said with a dignity that made the girl ashamed of herself.

"There will be no difficulty about my marrying, the main thing is whether you are all right. It's easier for a man than a girl if he does make a hash of it."

"Oh, Claude, don't be so good and generous, or you'll make me mad because I'm not going to have you after all."

"Good and generous! Nonsense! I'm only doing what any decent fellow would do; you'd do as much and more for me if things were reversed,"