it. She relinquished her own point of view, and
tried with all her honesty to put herself in his place instead.

It was not very difficult. The poverty-stricken childhood (so different
from her own!) with its terrible secret, its ever-hidden disgrace; small
wonder if it had become second nature to him to hide it! Then there was
the mother. Moya had always loved him for the tone of his lightest
reference to his mother. She thought now of the irreparable loss of that
mother's death, and felt how she herself had sworn in her heart to
repair it. She thought of their meeting, his sunburnt face, the new
atmosphere he brought with him, their immediate engagement: the
beginning had come almost as quickly as the end! Then Moya darkened.
She remembered how her people had tried to treat him, and how simply and
sturdily he had borne himself among them. Whereas, if he had told them
all ... but he might have told her!

Yet she wondered. The father was as good as dead, was literally dead to
the world; partly for his sake, perhaps, the secret had been kept so
jealously all these years by mother and son. Moya still thought that an
exception should have been made in her case. But, on mature reflection,
she was no longer absolutely and finally convinced of this. And the mere
shadow of a doubt upon the point was her first comfort in all these
hours.

Such was the inner aspect; the outward and visible was grave enough. It
was one thing to be true to a prisoner and a prisoner's son, but another
thing to remain engaged to him. Moya was no hand at secrets. And now she
hated them. So her mind was made up on one point. If she forgave him,
then no power should make her give him up, and she would wear his ring
before all her world, though it were the ring of a prisoner in Pentridge
Stockade. But she knew what that would mean, and a brief spell of too
vivid foresight, which followed, cannot be said to have improved
Rigden's chances of forgiveness.

There was one thing, however, which Moya had unaccountably forgotten.
This was the sudden inspiration which had come to her an hour ago, among
the station pines. She was reminded of it and of other things by the
arrival of Mrs. Duncan with a tray; she had even forgotten that her last
meal had been made in the middle of the afternoon, at the rabbiter's
camp. Mrs. Duncan had discovered this by questioning young Ives, and the
tea and eggs were the result of a consultation with Mr. Bethune.

"And after