eyes that were dim and moist; but it
was not the memory it recalled that made her emotion come welling up.
The look that had been in Tony's eyes as he turned away, the change that
had come over his face as she asked her purposely pointed questions, and
the recollection of the fair face of Ailleen and the crafty meanness of
Dickson's, all combined to stir her feelings.

"The wretched selfish creature!" she muttered to herself.
"The--the--beast!"

But she carefully refrained from making any further comment on the
matter to Tony during the remainder of the time he was at the Flat; and
when he rode away the following morning, full of enthusiasm for the
discovery he and his digger companions were going to make, and promising
general happiness to everybody as soon as he returned with his team-load
of nuggets, as he expressed it, he had no idea that she attributed his
gaiety and light-heartedness to a spirit of bravado which sought to hide
the real state of his feelings. But her intuitions had struck the truth.
When the thought of it forced his attention, or when a reference such as
she had made to Ailleen revealed it to him in spite of himself, Tony
winced under the sting of the girl's bearing towards him. Ordinarily he
flung himself into his work with the more ardour; he had gone into the
reckless gamble with Gleeson because as he neared Birralong it came to
him that the gold he had found was useless to him in the face of
Ailleen's coldness--useless, that is, for the purpose he had at first
desired it, for the purchase of a home to offer to her.

The question Mrs. Taylor had asked him, and the introduction of
Dickson's name before the mention of Ailleen, re-awakened not only the
smart he was suffering from, but also a suspicion which had come into
his mind--a suspicion that Dickson and his wealth were not entirely
dissociated from Ailleen's change of manner. As he rode away from the
Flat, setting out on a journey which might lead him to riches greater
than those of his rival, Tony for the first time in his life wished for
closer sympathy between some of his brothers and himself, so that he
might have made a confidant of one, and enlisted his help in
ascertaining whether matters between Ailleen and Dickson really were as
he feared. But there was neither bond nor sympathy between him and the
home-staying members of the Taylor family. He was vainly trying to
recall any one of whom he could make use in that respect when there