owards Nettie--they all turned to her with instinctive
curiosity. Never in all her troubles had Nettie been so pale; she looked
in her sister's face with a kind of despair.

"Is this _true_, Susan?" she said, with a sorrowful wonder as different
as possible from the doctor's joyful surprise--"not something said to
vex us--really true? And this has been going on, and I knew nothing of
it; and all this time you have been urging me to go back to the
colony--_me_--as if you had no other thoughts. If you had made up your
mind to this, what was the use of driving me desperate?" cried Nettie,
in a sudden outburst of that incomprehension which aches in generous
hearts. Then she stopped suddenly and looked from her sister, uttering
suppressed sobs, and hiding her face in her handkerchief on the sofa,
to the Australian before the fire. "What is the good of talking?" said
Nettie, with a certain indignant impatient indulgence, coming to an abrupt
conclusion. Nobody knew so well as she did how utterly useless it was to
remonstrate or complain. She dropt into the nearest chair, and began
with hasty tremulous hands to smooth down the cuffs of her black sleeves.
In the bitterness of the moment it was not the sudden deliverance, but
the heartlessness and domestic treachery that struck Nettie. She, the
champion and defender of this helpless family for years--who had given
them bread, and served it to them with her own cheerful unwearied
hands--who had protected as well as provided for them in her dauntless
innocence and youth. When she was thus cast off on the brink of the
costliest sacrifice of all, it was not the delightful sensation of
freedom which occurred to Nettie. She fell back with a silent pang of
injury swelling in her heart, and, all tremulous and hasty, gave her
agitated attention to the simple act of smoothing down her sleeves--a
simple but symbolical act, which conveyed a world of meaning to the mind
of the doctor as he stood watching her. The work she had meant to do was
over. Nettie's occupation was gone. With the next act of the domestic
drama she had nothing to do. For the first time in her life utterly
vanquished, with silent promptitude she abdicated on the instant. She
seemed unable to strike a blow for the leadership thus snatched from her
hands. With proud surprise and magnanimity she withdrew, forbearing even
the useless reproaches of which she had impatiently asked, "What was the
good?" Never abdicated emperor la