h
everything was! How impossible the whole thing would have appeared to
her had any fortune-teller in Bond Street prophesied the end of her
marriage journey!

And how, in the first moment of settling down, she had laughed with
Colin at the thought of what Chris and Molly Gaverick, and 'Eliza
Countess' would have said! But with what dauntless energy she had
worked in transforming her new abode and in making it reflect her own
personality. She had felt really grateful, she said, to the Union
delegates for having enticed away the builders before the inside
furnishings were complete. Soon they got hold of a bush carpenter, and
she was provided with occupation for a good many months.

Lady Bridget had been very happy in those early days. Colin had seemed
so thoroughly in the picture--strong, chivalrous, adoring--like a
Viking worshipping his conquered bride. The romance of it all appealed
tremendously to the Celtic blood in Bridget. It was her nature, when
she gave, to give generously. She had become genuinely in love with her
bush husband during that wonderful honeymoon journey.

Ah, that journey! What an experience! If she could have written it down
as a new adventure of 'The Lady of Quality,' how the great Gibbs would
have jumped at her 'copy!' Well, she had practically done so in her
letters to Joan Gildea--now back in her London flat. But the true
inwardness of the adventure was a thing never to be put into words.

No sign yet of the men. Lady Bridget ceased her restless pacing and
swung herself slowly to and fro in a hammock at the end of the veranda.
As she swung she traversed over again in her imagination the stages of
that honeymoon journey.

Two hundred and twenty-five miles of it, after the first camp out. Many
more nights under the stars. Then out of the gum forests they had gone
through the great western plains, covering ground fairly easily, for
McKeith had arranged to have fresh horses on the road, and they always
drove a spare pair ahead of the buggy. Occasionally they stopped at a
head-station. Once at night they pulled up at a bush house, and a
strange old man had put his head out of a window and shouted to them in
the darkness. 'If ye've come to see me, I'm drunk,' he had said, 'and
if you've come to drink, the rum-keg's empty, but ye'll find a pint pot
outside and a little water in the tank.' And then he had shut the
window again and refused further parley.

They had camped, hungry, in the paddock-