re, there was always a mystery hanging over the mother, nor
am I certain that she connived at her daughter's seduction, but
the girl's account was that after some successful Cup day there
had been too much champagne drunk all around, and that a man she
looked on as a friend came into her bedroom that night when she
was _tete montee_ and seduced or violated her--whichever word you
like to choose. Since then his visits had been frequent until she
met me, she said, and if I would be true to her she would be a
true wife to me, and I believed her and still believe she meant
what she said. But I left Melbourne shortly after this, our
letters got few and far between, and ultimately I heard she was
married to a young man who had always been in love with her....

"Among the inmates of the boarding house was a 'married' couple
who stayed for some time; he was an insignificant, ugly, little,
crosseyed commercial traveler; she was a pretty, little creature
who looked as innocent and was as merry as a child; we all vied
in paying her attentions and waiting on her like slaves, the
husband always smiling a cryptic smile. After they had left it
was hinted they were not married at all; the oldest hands had
been taken in.... One afternoon I met Dolly, the commercial
traveler's wife, and she stopped and spoke to me. I remembered
what I had heard and ventured on some pleasantry at which she
laughed, and on my proposing that we should go for a walk she
consented. She had left the commercial traveler, it came out in
conversation, and we went on talking and walking, one idea only
in my mind now; could I detain her till dark? Dolly, who was very
pretty indeed, amused herself with me for hours, playing hot and
cold, snubbing me one minute, encouraging me with her eyed
another. Hour after hour went and she found this game so
entertaining that she accompanied me to the park behind the
Botanical Gardens, and it was not until it was too late for me to
catch a train home that she gave herself to me. In fact, we
stayed out the whole of that warm summer night. As the hours went
by she told me of her home in London and how she first went
wrong. She had been a good girl till one day on an excursion she
drank some rum or gin, which seemingly revived some dormant taint
of heritage; when she went home that night sh