g to
the wants of their guests, who sat about on rocks and boulders, or with
due precautions taken against puff-adders and tarantulas, lay upon the
grass of the high bank in the shade of the fern and bush. And as vivid by
contrast with their black-robed, white-wimpled figures, as a slender
dragon-fly among a bevy of homely gnats, the graceful, prettily-clad
figure of Lynette showed, as she shared the Sister's hospitable labours.

She had her share of girlish vanity. She had put on a plain tailor-made
skirt of fine dark green cloth, short enough to show the dainty little
brown buckled shoes that she specially affected, and a thin white silk
shirt and knitted croquet-jacket of white wool. A scarlet leather belt
girt her slender waist, and a silver chatelaine jingled a gay tune at her
side, and about her white slim throat was a band of scarlet velvet, and
her wide-brimmed straw hat had a knot of purple and white clematis in it,
and a broad, vivid, emerald-green wing-quill thrust under the knot. And
the hair under the green-plumed hat gleamed bronze in the sunshine that
filtered through the thick foliage of the blue gum-trees that grew on
either bank of the river, and stretched their branches out to clasp across
the stream, like hands. She was too pale and too thin, and her eyes were
feverishly bright, but she looked happy, carrying her tray of steaming
teacups in spite of Beauvayse's anxious attempts to relieve her of the
burden, and the Chaplain's diffident entreaties that she should entrust
it to him. Their voices, mingled in gay argument, were borne by a warm
puff of spice-scented air to the ears of the elder people, standing in the
shade of the trees at the summit of the high, sloping bank, with the rusty
perambulator between them.

"I thank you," the Mother said, in her full, round tones. The eyes of
both, travelling back from that delicate, slight young figure, had met
once more. "Believing that you speak in perfect sincerity, I thank you,
and shall not hesitate to call upon you, should the need arise."

Her voice was very calm, and her discreet glance told nothing. He would
not have been a man of woman born if he had not been a little piqued. He
said, with an air of changing the subject:

"Miss Mildare strikes me as a very beautiful girl."

"Is she not?"

Her eyes grew tender, and her whole face was irradiated by the splendour
of her smile. She looked down the bushed and grass-covered slope to where
Lynette, a