m glad to see you before breakfast as I shall
not perhaps have a chance to speak to you if we are going to Kaburie
to-day with Mr Gerrard."

"What is it?"

"Mr Aulain has written to me. He wants me to marry him."

"So does Forde, who asked me for you last night."

Kate laughed.

"We'll talk about it by and by, my girl," said Fraser gravely, as he
stroked her head.

"There will not be much to talk about, father," was the decisive answer.
"I am never, never going to leave you for any man--no matter who he is."

CHAPTER XII

Fraser, his daughter and their two guests were on the road to Kaburie,
and within a few miles of the turn-off to Boorala. Kate and the
clergymen were together, her father and Gerrard some hundreds of yards
in advance, and all were walking their horses slowly, for the sun was
beating fiercely down upon them through the scantily-foliaged gum trees,
and Kaburie was yet twenty miles away. The girl sat in her saddle with
bent head, and there were traces of tears on her cheeks.

"I am very, very sorry, Mr Forde, for I _do_ like you very, very
much--more than any other man in the world except my father. You have
always been so kind to him and to me; but I never thought that you would
ask me to be your wife. And it hurts me to----"

Forde placed his hand on hers. "Never mind, Kate. It was a foolish dream
of mine, that is all. But you were always the one woman in the world to
me ever since I first met you two years ago. And it grieves me that I
should have made you shed one single tear."

His calm, steady voice, and the firm pressure of his hand reassured her.
Her father had said to her a few hours before that Forde would take her
refusal "like a man," and she had replied that she knew it.

She raised her face to his as he bent towards her, and, on the impulse
of a moment, born of her sincere liking for the man, kissed him. His
bronzed features flushed deeply, and his whole frame thrilled as their
lips met; and then he exercised a mighty restraint upon himself.

"Good-bye, little woman, and God bless you," he said softly, as he bent
over her.

"But why are you going away, Mr Forde? Father will be so distressed, and
so indeed will be everybody--for hundreds of miles about."

Forde had drawn himself together again, and swinging his right foot out
of the stirrup sat "side-saddle" and lit his pipe.

"Well, you see, Kate, my mother has left me two thousand pounds or
so. It was that that gav