f an hour Mary's sandwiches, sausage-rolls
and meat-pies; her jam-rolls, pastries and lemon-sponges; her jellies,
custards and creams; her blanc and jaunemanges and whipped syllabubs;
her trifles, tipsy-cakes and charlotte-russes formed the theme of talk
and objects of attention. And though the ladies picked with becoming
daintiness, the gentlemen made up for their partners' deficiencies; and
there was none present who did not, in the shape of a hearty and
well-turned compliment, add yet another laurel to Mary's crown.

Chapter III

It had struck two before the party began to break up. The first move
made, however, the guests left in batches, escorting one another to
their respective house-doors. The Henry Ococks' buggy had been in
waiting for some time, and Mrs. Henry's pretty head was drooping with
fatigue before Henry, who was in the vein, could tear himself from the
card-table. Mahony went to the front gate with them; then strolled with
the Longs to the corner of the road.

He was in no hurry to retrace his steps. The air was balmy, after that
of the overcrowded rooms, and it was a fabulously beautiful night. The
earth lay steeped in moonshine, as in the light of a silver sun. Trees
and shrubs were patterned to their last leaf on the ground before them.
What odd mental twist made mortals choose rather to huddle indoors, by
puny candle-light, than to be abroad laving themselves in a splendour
such as this?

Leaning his arms on the top rail of a fence, he looked across the slope
at the Flat, now hushed and still as the encampment of a sleeping army.
Beyond, the bush shimmered palely grey--in his younger years he had
been used, on a night like this when the moon sailed full and free, to
take his gun and go opossuming. Those two old woody gods, Warrenheip
and Buninyong, stood out more imposingly than by day; but the ranges
seemed to have retreated. The light lay upon them like a visible
burden, flattening their contours, filling up clefts and fissures with
a milky haze.

"Good evening, doctor!"

Spoken in his very ear, the words made him jump. He had been lost in
contemplation; and the address had a ghostly suddenness. But it was no
ghost that stood beside him--nor indeed was it a night for those
presences to be abroad whose element is the dark.

Ill-pleased at the intrusion, he returned but a stiff nod: then, since
he could not in decency greet and leave-take in a breath, feigned to go
on for a minute wi