d an absolutely foreign element into the Bush party. His pose of
the cynical, dashing, amiable aristocrat, with a cheerful contempt for
all aristocratic pretensions, was admirably sustained. His ready
good-fellowship pleased the men; his good looks, his facility in adopting
a deep interest in his companion for the moment, and his flow of spirits,
delighted the women; and yet it not infrequently happened that his
conversation was designed more for his own edification than for the
entertainment of his hearers. It seemed to Lucy Woodrow that the man only
half concealed a sort of mephistophelian contempt for the people towards
whom he still contrived to maintain a semblance of cordiality.

The interesting Englishman was certainly very attentive to Mrs.
Macdougal, and Mrs. Macdougal was certainly very much flattered and
disturbed by his attentions. The gossip that had sprung up, from which
the principals, and Lucy, Mr. and Mrs. Cargill, and Macdougal alone were
excluded, was, to some extent, founded on fact, and the guests left the
house reluctantly, confident that interesting mischief was brewing at
Boobyalla.

For all this, Ryder's attitude towards Marcia in the presence of her
guests had been merely a piquant travesty of that of an adorer. He had
offered her gallant homage with a humorous reservation. Perhaps he had
reckoned on a keener sense of humour than the guests were possessed of.
At any rate, they preferred to put a rather serious construction on all
they saw. But Mrs. Macdougal alone had good reason for regarding her lion
in a serious light; she alone saw him in his other guise, that of the
passionate man whose passions burnt behind a cold face--pale as if with
the pallor of a prison that could never leave it, handsome with a quality
of suggestive beauty most certain to appeal to a simple, romantic woman.
Already Walter Ryder had infused a new strain into Marcia Macdougal's
character--terror, the terror that is akin to love, had endowed her with
a womanly gravity. Though the other guests had been gone a fortnight or
more, Ryder still remained at Boobyalla.

Lucy Woodrow was deeply interested in Ryder. He treated her as a comrade,
an equal, and she could not help noticing the difference in his tone
toward her and that he had adopted towards the others, nor could she help
being flattered by the implied compliment. She was exempt from his
raillery. All along he inferred that she understood him, and accepted his
ven