He gave
her no love: she felt that, though she would never have admitted it by
word of mouth; for even if he turned away from her, with brusqueness
and hard words, she could not but love the boy her eyes had never seen.
The memories he brought back to her, the associations of the years which
had preceded the time of affliction, and the play of emotions and
passions which she had known before the side-wash of life's stream
caught her and drifted her, a dismantled derelict, on to the dreary
salt-marsh of blind solitude, were enough to shed a glamour over him,
however selfish and shallow-minded he might be.

And yet all the memories he brought back to her were not peaceful. There
were some which broke the sunlight of the past by broad black bands of
shadow, some which of late had been forcing themselves into her mind
with an assertiveness that made her long for the companionship of some
one with sympathy; such a one, indeed, as she realized Ailleen to be the
moment the warm, big-hearted girl clasped her hand when she thought a
stray word had given pain.

Shut out from the world by her blindness, she was still further isolated
by the circumstances under which she was situated at Barellan. An
up-country station has not a very large visiting list at the best of
times; in the early days of a district there are the gum-trees and the
'possums, the scenery and the stock, and that is about all wherewith a
woman can interest herself beyond those with whom she is immediately
associated. With all these eliminated, the world of a white woman on a
station is not likely to be particularly large nor especially
attractive; and so the advent of Ailleen at Barellan put a fresh
interest, and a kindly interest, into the blind woman's life. It was
sorrow which had driven Ailleen away from Birralong--a sorrow and grief
which the girl had bravely striven to keep in subjection by care and
attention to the woman whose hospitality she was enjoying. But there was
little heed of that in the mind of the Lady of Barellan. She was
contented, and the cause of her content, or the price, so long as
another paid it, was nothing to her now, any more than it had been in
the far-off days before the curtain came down upon her vision.

The thoughts in her mind were pleasant, for she was thinking how the
present attraction for Willy at the station might be made a permanent
attraction, and then there would never be a risk of his being taken away
from her. The c