have been lying there weeks and
weeks before the master died."

Lionel signed to them to leave the room: there was nothing to call for
their remaining in it. Mrs. Verner asked him what the glove meant.

"I assure you I do not know," was his reply. And he took it up, and
examined it well again. One of his riding gloves, scarcely worn, with a
tear near the thumb; but there was nothing upon it, not so much as a
trace, a spot, to afford any information. He rolled it up mechanically
in the two papers, and placed them in his pocket, lost in thought.

"Do you know that I have heard from Australia?" asked Mrs. Verner.

The words aroused him thoroughly. "Have you? I did not know it."

"I wonder Mary Tynn did not tell you. The letters came this morning. If
you look about"--turning her eyes on the tables and places--"you will
find them somewhere."

Lionel knew that Mary Tynn had been too much absorbed in his business to
find room in her thoughts for letters from Australia. "Are these the
letters?" he asked, taking up two from a side-table.

"You'll know them by the post-marks. Do sit down and read them to me,
Lionel. My sight is not good for letters now, and I couldn't read half
that was in them. The ink's as pale as water. If it was the ink Fred
took out, the sea must have washed into it. Yes, yes, you must I read
both to me, and I shall not let you go away before dinner."

He did not like, in his good nature, to refuse her. And he sat there and
read the long letters. Read Sibylla's. Before the last one was fully
accomplished, Lionel's cheeks wore their hectic flush.

They had made a very quick and excellent passage. But Sibylla found
Melbourne _hateful_. And Fred was ill; ill with fever. A fever was
raging in a part of the crowded town, and he had caught it. She did not
think it was a catching fever, either, she added; people said it arose
from the over-population. They could not as yet hear of John, or his
money, or anything about him; but Fred would see into it when he got
better. They were at a part of Melbourne called Canvas Town, and she,
Sibylla, was sick of it, and Fred drank heaps of brandy. If it were all
land between her and home, she should set off at once on foot, and toil
her way back again. She _wished_ she had never come! Everything she
cared for, except Fred, seemed to be left behind in England.

Such was her letter. Fred's was gloomy also, in a different way. He said
nothing about any fever; he mention