ly less full of
her experiences than of the crowning triumph yet to come. She had bought
every song of Sir Julian's to be had in Melbourne, and his name was
always on her lips. In a reckless moment Miss Bouverie had inquired his
age.

"I really don't know," said Mrs. Clarkson. "What _can_ it matter?"

"I only wondered whether he was a youngish man or not."

Mrs. Clarkson had already raised her eyebrows; at this answer they
disappeared behind a _toupet_ dating from her late descent upon the
Victorian capital.

"Really, Miss Bouverie!" she said, and nothing more in words. But the
tone was intolerable, and its accompanying sneer a refinement in
vulgarity, which only the really refined would have resented as it
deserved. Miss Bouverie got up and left the room without a word. But her
flaming face left a misleading tale behind.

She was not introduced to Sir Julian; but that was not her prime
disappointment when the great night came. All desire for an
introduction, all interest in the concert, died a sudden death in Hilda
Bouverie at her first glimpse of the gentleman who was duly presented to
Mrs. Clarkson as Sir Julian Crum. He was more than middle-aged; he wore
a gray beard, and the air of a somewhat supercilious martyr; his near
sight was obviated by double lenses in gold rims. Hilda could have wept
before the world. For nearly three weeks she had been bowing in
imagination to a very different Sir Julian, bowing as though she had
never beheld him in her life before; and yet in three minutes she saw
how little real reason she had ever had for the illogical conclusion to
which she had jumped. She searched for the sprightly figure she had
worn in her mind's eye; his presence under any other name would still
have been welcome enough now. But he was not there at all. In the patchy
glare of the kerosene lamps, against the bunting which lined the
corrugated walls of Gulland's new iron store, among flower and weed of
township and of station, did Miss Bouverie seek in vain for a single
eye-glass and a military mustache.

The concert began. Miss Bouverie opened it herself with the inevitably
thankless pianoforte solo, in this case gratuitously meretricious into
the bargain, albeit the arbitrary choice of no less a judge than Mrs.
Clarkson. It was received with perfunctory applause, through which a
dissipated stockman thundered thickly for a song. Miss Bouverie averted
her eyes from Sir Julian (ensconced like Royalty in the c