tell, Moya!"

"You should have told me this first. But you tell nothing till you are
forced! I might have known you were keeping the worst up your sleeve! I
shouldn't be surprised if the very worst were still to come!"

"It's coming now," said Rigden, bitterly; "it's coming from you, in the
most miserable hour of all my existence; you must make it worse! How
was I to know the other wouldn't be enough for you? How do I know now?"

"Thank you," said Moya, a knife in her heart, but another in her tongue.

The voices drew nearer through the pines; there was Harkness mounted,
with a led horse, and Theodore Bethune on foot. Rigden turned abruptly
to the girl.

"There are just two more things to be said. None of them know where he
is, and none of them know my motive. You're in both secrets. You'd
better keep them--unless you want Toorak to know who it was you were
engaged to."

The rest followed without a word. It might have been a scene in a play
without words, and indeed the moon chalked the faces of the players, and
the Riverina crickets supplied the music with an orchestra some millions
strong. The clink of a boot in a stirrup, a thud in the saddle, another
clink upon the off side; and Rigden lifting his wideawake as he rode
after Harkness through the gate; and Bethune holding the gate open,
shutting it after them, and taking Moya's arm as she stood like Lot's
wife in the moonlight.

XI

BETHUNE _v._ BETHUNE

"I don't want to rub things in, or to make things worse," said Theodore,
kindly enough, as they approached the house; "but we shall have to talk
about them, for all that, Moya."

"I'm ready," was the quick reply. "I'll talk till daylight as long as
you won't let me think!"

"That's the right child!" purred her brother. "Come to my room; it's the
least bit more remote; and these youths are holding indignation meetings
on their own account. Ah! here's one of them."

Spicer had stepped down from the verandah with truculent stride.

"A word with you, Bethune," said he, brusquely.

"Thanks, but I'm engaged to my sister for this dance," replied the airy
Theodore. Moya could not stand his tone. Also she heard young Ives
turning the horses out for the night, and an inspiration seized her by
the heels.

"No, for the next," said she; "I want to speak to Mr. Ives."

And she flew to the horse-yard, where the slip-rails were down, and Ives
shooing horse after horse across them like the incurable new c