it up, and that's why she's had to go to Melbourne--about her
dress, you know."

He smiled sardonically through mustache and monocle.

"Her charity begins near home!"

"It need not necessarily end there."

"Yet she sings five times herself."

"True--without the encores."

"And you don't sing at all."

"But I accompany."

"A bitter irony! But, I say, what's this? 'Under the distinguished
patronage of Sir Julian Crum, Mus. Doc., D.C.L.' Who may he be?"

"Director of the Royal College of Music, in the old country," the girl
answered with a sigh.

"Royal College of Music? That's something new, since my time," said the
visitor, sighing also. "But what's a man like that doing out here?"

"He has a brother a squatter, the next station but one. Sir Julian's
spending the English winter with him on account of his health."

"So you've seen something of him?"

"I wish we had."

"But Mrs. Clarkson has?"

"No--not yet."

"I see!" and an enlightened gleam shot through the eye-glass. "So this
is her way of getting to know a poor overworked wreck who came out to
patch his lungs in peace and quiet! And she's going to sing him one of
his own songs; she's gone to Melbourne to dress the part; and you're not
going to sing anything at all!"

Miss Bouverie refrained alike from comment and confirmation; but her
silence was the less creditable in that her companion was now communing
chiefly with himself. She felt, indeed, that she had already been guilty
of a certain disloyalty to one to whom she owed some manner of
allegiance; but that was the extent of Miss Bouverie's indiscretion in
her own eyes. It caused her no qualms to entertain an anonymous
gentleman whom she had never seen before. A colder course had commended
itself to the young lady fresh from London; but to a Colonial girl, on a
station where special provision was made for the entertaining of strange
travellers, the situation was simply conventional. It might have been
less onerous with host or hostess on the spot; but then the visitor
would not have heard her sing, and he seemed to know what singing was.

Miss Bouverie watched him as he leant over the piano, looking through
the songs which she had dared once more to bring forth from her room.
She might well have taken a romantic interest in the dark and dapper
man, with the military eye-glass and mustache, the spruce duck jacket
and the spurred top-boots. It was her first meeting with such a type in
the back-