s lovely place and its people.

A long low white house, surrounded by a blooming garden. Wide windows
opening on a lawn. The ever glorious, ever changing sea beneath. It is
evening. I am talking with Mrs. Frere, of theories of social reform,
of picture galleries, of sunsets, and new books. There comes a sound
of wheels on the gravel. It is the magistrate returned from his
convict-discipline. We hear him come briskly up the steps, but we go on
talking. (I fancy there was a time when the lady would have run to
meet him.) He enters, coldly kisses his wife, and disturbs at once the
current of our thoughts. "It has been hot to-day. What, still no letter
from head-quarters, Mr. North! I saw Mrs. Golightly in town, Sylvia, and
she asked for you. There is to be a ball at Government House. We must
go." Then he departs, and is heard in the distance indistinctly cursing
because the water is not hot enough, or because Dawkins, his convict
servant, has not brushed his trousers sufficiently. We resume our chat,
but he returns all hungry, and bluff, and whisker-brushed. "Dinner.
Ha-ha! I'm ready for it. North, take Mrs. Frere." By and by it is,
"North, some sherry? Sylvia, the soup is spoilt again. Did you go out
to-day? No?" His eyebrows contract here, and I know he says inwardly,
"Reading some trashy novel, I suppose." However, he grins, and
obligingly relates how the police have captured Cockatoo Bill, the noted
bushranger.

After dinner the disciplinarian and I converse--of dogs and horses,
gamecocks, convicts, and moving accidents by flood and field. I remember
old college feats, and strive to keep pace with him in the relation of
athletics. What hypocrites we are!--for all the time I am longing to
get to the drawing-room, and finish my criticism of the new poet, Mr.
Tennyson, to Mrs. Frere. Frere does not read Tennyson--nor anybody else.
Adjourned to the drawing-room, we chat--Mrs. Frere and I--until supper.
(He eats supper.) She is a charming companion, and when I talk my
best--I can talk, you must admit, O Familiar--her face lightens up
with an interest I rarely see upon it at other times. I feel cooled and
soothed by this companionship. The quiet refinement of this house, after
bullocks and Bathurst, is like the shadow of a great rock in a weary
land.

Mrs. Frere is about five-and-twenty. She is rather beneath the middle
height, with a slight, girlish figure. This girlish appearance is
enhanced by the fact that she has bri