scious an air--'Representative of the Throne' seemed
written all over him and no greater contrast could be imagined than the
new Governor presented to his predecessor, an elderly, impoverished
marquis who had the brain of a diplomatist and the manners of a British
farmer, and who with his homely wife had been immensely popular in
Leichardt's Land.

Nor a greater contrast than the new Governor's wife to the fat, kindly,
old marchioness. Lady Tallant was a London woman, of about forty-five.
She had been excessively pretty, but had rather lost her looks after a
bad illness, and her worst affliction was now a tendency to
scragginess, cleverly concealed where the chest was no longer visible.
Obviously artificial outside, at any rate Lady Tallant was, as Mrs
Gildea had reason to believe, a genuine sort underneath. She had a
thin, high-nosed face of the conventional English aristocratic type, a
good deal rouged to-night, but with natural shadows under the eyes and
below the arch of the brows which were toned to correspond with the
evidently dyed hair. Her dress, a Paris creation of pale satin and
glistening embroidery, was draped to hide her thinness, and her neck
and throat were almost covered with strings of pearls and clusters of
clear-set diamonds. Judging from the way in which the
Leichardt'stonians stared at her as she came down the stairs, it seemed
probable that none of them had ever before seen anyone quite like Lady
Tallant.

Joan Gildea's eyes passed quickly from Sir Luke and Lady Tallant to a
third figure behind them, on the half-landing, but first she realised
in a flashing glance that Colin McKeith's gaze had been all the while
riveted upon that figure. Not in astonishment--a proof to Joan that he
had seen it before--but in a kind of unwilling fascination, most
upsetting to Mrs Gildea's sense of responsibility in the matter.

The Visionary Woman of the camp-fire! And she had let Colin McKeith
believe that Bridget O'Hara was the embodiment of his Ideal--height
five foot seven at the least: weight ten stone or more: smooth-parted,
Greek-coiled hair: a cross between a goddess and a Madonna--that was
Colin's Ideal--Good Heavens! What did he now behold? A very little
woman. One of the snippets he despised. Not an ounce of the traditional
dignity about her. Lady Bridget gave the impression of an
old-fashioned, precocious child, dressed up in a picture frock of soft
shining white stuff, hanging on a straight slender