'
scoffed Biddy. 'Ordering sprats and plaice for dinner and pretending
they're soles and whitebait. Perambulators stuffing up the hall; paying
your own books and having your gown made at home! No, thank you.
'Possum skins and a black's gunya--that's Australese for a wigwam,
isn't it?--appeal to me infinitely more.'

Mrs Gildea threw up her hands.

'Biddy, you haven't the faintest notion how dull and uncomfortable--how
utterly unpoetic--how sordid the life of a struggling bushman can be.'

'No! You know, Joan, I think that it might be perfectly fascinating--if
one really cared for the bushman.'

'Really cared! Have you EVER really cared for any man? COULD you ever
really care?'

'That's what I've been asking myself. It would have to be someone quite
different from all the other men I've liked--something altogether above
the ordinary man, to make me REALLY care.'

'You said that Mr Willoughby Maule was different from any man you'd
ever met. Each man you've ever fancied yourself in love with has been
different from all the rest.'

Lady Bridget laughed rather uneasily.

'How tiresomely exact you are, Joan! Of course, they were different.
Everybody is different from everybody else. And I attract marked types.
Will was more marked and more attractive--as well as attracted--that's
all.'

'His attraction doesn't seem to have been as strong as self-interest,
any way,' said Joan, with deliberate terseness.

The girl's small, pale face flushed to deep crimson for a moment.

'Joan, you are cruel! You know that was the sting! And it wouldn't have
stung so if I hadn't cared. Sometimes I feel the maddest desire to hurt
him--to pay him out. I never felt like that about any of the
others--the ones I really did ALMOST want to marry. And then--at other
times I'd give ANYTHING just to have him again as he used to be.'

'I'm certain you weren't really in love with him,' exclaimed Mrs Gildea.

Bridget seemed to be considering. 'Wasn't I?--I'm not so sure of that.
No--' she went on impetuously, 'I was not REALLY in love with him. He
had a magnetic influence over me as I told you. Perhaps I might get a
little under it again if he were to appear suddenly without his
wife--it turns me sick to think of a married man having a magnetic
influence over me.... Even if there was no wife--now. So, when you've
idealised a person and can't idealise him any more: C'EST FINI. There's
nothing but a ghost to come and make you uncomfortable som