is poor. A Carey has been good enough for a Pennycuick before today.
God! I wish I'd known. I might have got him something better to do, and
saved them both from this. Poor old girl! Is she very bad, Debbie?
Shall I go and talk to her a bit?"

"I wouldn't tonight, father, if I were you," replied Deb, with a weary
air. "She is quieter now, and I have given her something to send her to
sleep. I will keep my door open, and go and look at her through the
night. I think she will be better tomorrow."

On the morrow Mary was at least more self-controlled. She came amongst
her family with the look of one who had passed through an illness, and
shrinking from the first words and glances. But they all gathered her
to their hearts, and murmured loving sympathy in her ears, and tenderly
fussed over her and waited upon her. Her father took her to his
sanctum, and showed her his old daguerreotype and valentine, and told
her they should be hers at his death. Miss Keene excited as an old maid
is over anybody's love affair, wanted to take over the house-keeping as
well as the doing of the flowers, in order to leave the mourner free to
enjoy the full luxury of her state. The governess, assumed to be above
love affairs, was very strict with Frances, holding her to tasks set on
purpose to prevent her from teasing her eldest sister. But Frances had
informed the servants overnight that Mr Carey was drowned, and that he
had been Miss Pennycuick's affianced husband all the time, unbeknown to
anybody. And the tale was already spreading far and wide--to the
Urquharts at Five Creeks, to Mr Thornycroft at Bundaboo, to Mr
Goldsworthy and his parishioners, to the editor of the local paper--so
that soon the family friends were arriving, to press Mary's hand and
condole with her--to show her how she had risen in the world, as a
woman in the eyes of all.

"No, no," she protested, when the affianced husband was too literally
taken for granted; "it was not a formal engagement. It was
only"--defending herself against the puzzled stare and lifted
eyebrow--"only that we understood each other. He was coming back, if he
had lived."

The wish was father to the thought. Good, honest girl as she was, she
had persuaded herself to this--that he would have come back if he had
lived, and that then the omitted formalities called for by that
graveside kiss would certainly have been observed. It seems incredible,
but rampant sex does stranger things every day of the