Of course we had some delightful drives along the south shore to Port
Jackson, and back to Sydney along the south-head road--a drive in which
one may see most of the beauties of Sydney vegetation--the great
Eucalyptus or blue gum trees, between the giant boles of which shine
the glittering waters of the harbour; but there are a hundred healthy
orchids, and wild flowers of varied vivid hues, though but few of them
have any perfume. Parramatta is to Sydney what Richmond is to London, or
what Versailles was to Paris; but it is less secluded than it once was,
of course, and Cockatoo Island, once the penal settlement, is less
unfrequented than the Isle of Portland, where English convicts work out
their sentence. This, and Shark Island, are likely places enough to
attract strangers, but Parramatta was our resort on this Christmas Eve.
Nothing came of it, except that I found myself when I got back to the
hotel at night, and had bidden good-bye only after there was no further
pretext for staying for "another cigar," in the large, bare, cool room
which Mr. Deane had hired as a sitting-room in a large house in Sydney.
The drive home had been a merry and yet a melancholy--not a sentimental
one; there was a good deal of twilight about, and there was
laughing--but somehow, Mary Deane and I didn't seem to find much to
laugh about--I didn't, I know, for she told me they were going away to
Bathurst, and I think I heard a sob, I know I felt her hand tremble when
I took it in mine, and it was lucky I had been used to driving a team,
for to hold whip and reins in one hand might give a hard-mouthed boring
horse a chance of going at his own pace down a gully.

However, before I said my final farewells it had been settled that I was
to go with Mr. Deane and Mary as far as the Bathurst Plains, for I had a
little business of my own in the Blue Mountain district. We were to
start in a week, and I could scarcely believe that the whole affair was
other than a dream, as I sat at the open window smoking till the
pinky-gray dawn of Christmas Day broke over the scrubby garden of the
hotel. I had been in a sort of dream, in which the form of Mary Deane
was the chief figure, but there was another less pleasing shape, which
came and went in my visions in a purposeless kind of way, one which I
had seen that day lounging about the landing-stage, where he passed me
first with a scowl and then with a muttered oath.

Now, I had first made his acquaintance in