when the door opened and Sibyl ran in.

"How serious you both are!" she cried. "What is the matter?"

"Nothing," he answered. "I suppose one must be serious sometimes.
Good-bye, Mother; I will have my dinner at five o'clock. Everything is
packed, except my shirts, so you need not trouble."

"Good-bye, my son," she answered with a bow of strained stateliness.

She was extremely annoyed at the tone he had adopted with her, and
there was something in his look that had made her feel afraid.

"Kiss me, Mother," said the girl. Her flowerlike lips touched the
withered cheek and warmed its frost.

"My child! my child!" cried Mrs. Vane, looking up to the ceiling in
search of an imaginary gallery.

"Come, Sibyl," said her brother impatiently. He hated his mother's
affectations.

They went out into the flickering, wind-blown sunlight and strolled
down the dreary Euston Road. The passersby glanced in wonder at the
sullen heavy youth who, in coarse, ill-fitting clothes, was in the
company of such a graceful, refined-looking girl. He was like a common
gardener walking with a rose.

Jim frowned from time to time when he caught the inquisitive glance of
some stranger. He had that dislike of being stared at, which comes on
geniuses late in life and never leaves the commonplace. Sibyl,
however, was quite unconscious of the effect she was producing. Her
love was trembling in laughter on her lips. She was thinking of Prince
Charming, and, that she might think of him all the more, she did not
talk of him, but prattled on about the ship in which Jim was going to
sail, about the gold he was certain to find, about the wonderful
heiress whose life he was to save from the wicked, red-shirted
bushrangers. For he was not to remain a sailor, or a supercargo, or
whatever he was going to be. Oh, no! A sailor's existence was
dreadful. Fancy being cooped up in a horrid ship, with the hoarse,
hump-backed waves trying to get in, and a black wind blowing the masts
down and tearing the sails into long screaming ribands! He was to
leave the vessel at Melbourne, bid a polite good-bye to the captain,
and go off at once to the gold-fields. Before a week was over he was to
come across a large nugget of pure gold, the largest nugget that had
ever been discovered, and bring it down to the coast in a waggon
guarded by six mounted policemen. The bushrangers were to attack them
three times, and be defeated with immense slaughter. Or, no.