.'

'But why should that have affected you. One might have imagined he had
been your lover. Was he ever your lover, Biddy? I must know.'

'And if he had been, do you think I should tell you,' she answered
coldly.

McKeith's face turned a dark red. His eyes literally blazed.

'That's enough.' He said, 'I shall not ask you another question about
him. I am answered already.'

He stood aside to let her pass out into the veranda, and she walked
along to the sitting-room.

Dinner went off, however, more agreeably than might have been expected.
Lady Bridget's manner was simple and to the guest charming. The black
dress, the touch of pensiveness was in keeping with the shadow of
tragedy. But she spoke in a natural way, and with tender regret of Lady
Tallant--questioning Maule as to when he had last seen her, and
learning from him how it had been at Rosamond's instigation that he had
cabled proposing himself as a companion in Sir Luke's loneliness. It
had been only a week after his arrival in Leichardt's Town that the
blow had fallen.

'You know, Tallant and I always hit it off very well together,'he
observed explanatorily, addressing McKeith. 'It was at their house that
I used to meet Lady Bridget during the few months that I had the honour
of her acquaintance in England.'

McKeith looked at his guest in a resentful but half puzzled way. A
spasm of doubt shook him. Suppose he had been making a fool of
himself--insulting his wife by unreasoning suspicions? A vague contempt
in her courteous aloofness had stung him to the quick. And the other
man's easy self assurance, the light interchange of conversation
between them about things and people of which McKeith knew nothing--all
gave the Australian a sense of bafflement--the feeling that these two
were ruled by another social code, belonged to a different world, in
which he had no part. He had been sitting at the head of his table,
perfunctorily doing his duty as host, wounded in his
self-esteem--almost the tenderest part on him, morose and miserable.
Now he snatched at the idea that he had been mistaken, as if it were a
life-buoy thrown him in deep waters. He began to talk, to assert
himself, to prove himself cock of his own walk. And Maule suavely
encouraged him to lay down the law on things Australian, while Lady
Bridget withdrew into herself, baffling and enraging McKeith still more
hopelessly. He did not seem now to know his wife! A catastrophe had
happened. What? Ho