e acted.

Lady Bridget was no exception to the rule of her family. She had
accepted Colin McKeith in a blind impulse of escape from the old
hedged-in existence of her order, of which she was quite tired and
where-in she had proved herself a failure. She had been attracted by
the idea that he represented, of wide spaces and primitive adventures.
She had always longed to travel in untrodden ways, and had loved
stories of romantic barbarism. And then, too, some queer glamour of the
man had got hold of her. She was intensely susceptible to personal
influence--his bigness, his simplicity, his strength and daring, and
the feeling that he was quite capable of mastering her, not only by
brute force--which always appeals to a certain type of woman--but by
power of will, by a tenacity of passion which she recognised even
through the shy reserve with which McKeith tried to cloak his
adoration. For she was goddess to him, as well as lady-love--and that
she realised plainly. A look from her would make him go white and his
large hands tremble; an unexpected grace from her would fill him with
reverent ecstasy.

The thing happened one soft moonlit evening after dinner at Government
House, when she had strolled out alone to a secluded part of the
terrace, and he had followed her after the men left the dining-room.
She was in a mood of tempestuous raging against her ordained lot.
Letters had come from England that day which had irritated her and made
her wonder how she could endure any longer her galling state of
dependence. Eliza Countess of Gaverick had sent her a meagre cheque,
accompanied by a scathing rebuke of her extravagance. Some cutting
little sarcasms of Molly Gaverick's had likewise annoyed her, and she
fretted under the miserable sense of her inadequacy to the demands of a
world she despised and yet hankered after. Then Sir Luke had been
tiresomely pertinacious over some small dereliction on Bridget's part
from the canons of Government House etiquette, which he had requested
should not be repeated. Rosamond Tallant had been tiresome also and had
made her feel that even here she was no more than a dependent who must
conform to the wills of her official superiors. Joan Gildea might have
served as a safety-valve, but Joan was away in or near the Jenolan
Caves, and could not be got at unless Bridget chose to throw up other
things and go to her, which Bridget was not inclined to do.

The whole thing was a tangle. If only it we