from their innate and
unparalleled cynicism. At her worst she had warm feelings, justly
balanced by the faculty of cold expression. And at her best she was
quick to see her faults and to deplore them; a candid and enthusiastic
friend; staunch at your side, sincere to your face, loyal at all costs
behind your back.

It was this loyalty that came to her rescue now: she stood suddenly
self-convicted of a whole calendar of secret crime against the man whom
she professed to love. Did she love him? Could she possibly love him,
and so turn on him in an instant, even in her heart? Oh, yes, yes! She
was a little fool, that was all; at least she hoped it was all. To think
that her worst faults should hunt her up on the very heels of her frank
confession of them! So in a few minutes sense prevailed over
sensibility. And for a little all was well.

But these minutes mounted up by fives and then by tens. And the verandah
was now filled to blindness and suffocation by the sunken sun. And there
sat Moya Bethune, the admired of all the most admirable admirers
elsewhere, baking and blinking in solitary martyrdom, while, with a grim
and wilful obstinacy, she stoically waited the pleasure of a back-block
overseer who preferred a disreputable tramp's society to hers!

The little fool in her was uppermost once more. There was perhaps some
provocation now. Yet a little fool it indubitably was. She thought of
freckles. Let them come. They would be his fault. Not that he would
care.

Care!

And her short lip lifted in a peculiar smile; it was the war-smile of
the Bethunes, and not beautiful in itself, but Moya it touched with such
a piquant bitter-sweetness that some of her swains would anger her for
that very look. Her teeth were white as the wing of the sulphur-crested
cockatoo, and that look showed them as no other. Then there was the
glitter it put into her eyes: they were often lovelier, but never quite
so fine. And a sweet storm-light turned her skin from pale rose to
glowing ivory, and the short lip would tremble one moment to set more
unmercifully the next. Even so that those who loved and admired the
milder Moya, feared and adored her thus.

But this Moya was seldom seen in Toorak, or, for that matter, anywhere
else; and, of course, it was never to show itself any more, least of all
at Eureka Station. Yet it did so this first, this very afternoon, though
not all at once.

For the next thing that happened she took better than