this:
Have no fears for the happiness of

Your BIDDY.'

From Colin in telegraphic conciseness:

'Tremendously happy. She's absolutely my Ideal--in everything but size.'

All very satisfactory and conclusive. But--Mrs Gildea could not escape
from a vague misgiving. She was not afraid of the ghost of Mr
Willoughby Maule: indeed, she argued favourably from the baldness of
Bridget's letter in comparison with the reams of sentiment she had
written upon the previous occasion. Nor did she feel uneasy on the
score of any others of Lady Bridget's bygone passions. But had this
complex, fastidious, physically-refined creature the least
comprehension of what life on the Upper Leura might mean? And how about
an Ideal dethroned from her pedestal and plumped down amid the crude
realities of the nethermost Bush?

Mrs Gildea did not get to the wedding. She was ordered to report on the
mines of Western Australia, and was on the other side of the continent
when the marriage took place. In fact, it seemed doubtful whether she
would again meet Lady Bridget before her mission as Special
Correspondent ended. But the McKeiths were to spend their honeymoon in
travelling to his station on the Upper Leura, a distance of some
hundreds of miles from the nearest port, and quite out of THE
IMPERIALIST programme.

She read, however, circumstantial accounts of the wedding, and there
were portraits of the pair--in which Colin looked grumpy and Lady
Bridget whimsically amused--snap shots, too, of the wedding cortege, in
which Sir Luke Tallant, fathering the Bride, appeared a pompous figure
in full uniform; and Lady Tallant in splendid panoply, most stately and
gracious. A long account followed of the bride's family connections, in
which the biographer touched upon the accident of sex that had deprived
her of the hereditary honours; the ancient descent of the Gavericks,
with a picture of the old Irish castle where Lady Bridget had been
brought up--and so forth, and so forth. Mrs Gildea sighed as she read,
and pictured in her imagination the wild wastes of the Never-Never Land
and the rough head-station which was to be Lady Bridget's home.

BOOK II

FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF LADY BRIDGET O'HARA

CHAPTER 1

It was the way of the O'Haras to do things first and to consider
afterwards whether it were well or ill that they should be done. Many a
ruined O'Hara might have fared differently in life's battle had he
thought before h