, dimly lighted
by the two candles. He was observing the feminine details the
untidinesses so characteristic of her; the daintinesses, equally
characteristic--all in such odd contrast with inevitable bush
roughnesses. He noticed the silver and ivory on the dressing-table; the
large silver-framed photographs--an autographed one of the Queen of
Wartenburg--Molly Gaverick and Rosamond Tallant in Court veil and
feathers, Joan Gildea at her type-writer--the confusion of books, the
embroidered coverlet on the large bed, the bush-made couch at its foot
upholstered in rose-patterned chintz on which she had seated herself.

'You have GOT to go,' she urged. 'WHATEVER happens, you are leaving
here with the mailman to-morrow.... Promise--on your word of
honour--that NOTHING shall hinder you.'

'Of course, I shall keep my promise, though it breaks my heart to leave
you like this. But I know--I feel that the parting will not be for
long.... Yes....' as she slowly shook her head and a strange fateful
look shadowed the feverish brightness of her eyes. 'I COULDN'T leave
you if I didn't feel certain of that.'

'Oh, I'm tired out. I'm tired--dead tired--' Her face was ghastly, her
lips like burning coals. 'I can't argue any more. And now it's
good-night--good-bye.'

'Not good-bye. At least there will be time to-morrow for that.'

'You MUST go--Good-night.'

He left her, but waited in the veranda, reassuring himself by the sound
of movements on the other side of the closed door. When all was silent,
and the candles extinguished, he went back to his own room.

He saw on the dressing-table his watch and chain with the key detached
beside them--a confirmnation of the truth of what Lady Bridget had told
him. But she had forgotten to tell him of the note she had left also,
and, naturally, he did not look for it. Had he known and looked he
would have discovered that the note was gone.

CHAPTER 6

Lady Bridget always looked back upon the next few days as a confused
nightmare. She awoke in the grip of fever--that malarial kind which is
common in Australia--tried to get up as usual, but fell back upon her
bed, faint and dizzy. Her brows ached. She had alternations of burning
heat and icy coldness. There came active periods in the dull lethargy
which is often a phase of fever, and from which she only roused herself
at the spur of some urgent call on her faculties. One of these was
Willoughby Maule's anxious message of enquiry conv