I
T is a blazing winter day in Northern Queensland; a morning when it is quite a pleasure to turn one’s eyes from the sun-scorched, shadowless “open country” outside to the cool, thatched verandah of “Government House” (head station-house), where Mr. Wilson Giles, the owner of Murdaro run, resides. It is particularly grateful to do so to-day, for in addition to the soft green shade of crimson-blossomed Bougainvillias and other northern floral favourites, the presence of a fair female form in a cool, light dress—that sight so dear to men imprisoned in up-country, societyless wilds—lends 144 a double charm to the already attractive shelter from the sun’s rays. The young lady who is now to engage our attention for a brief period is Miss Lileth Mundella, to whose future hopes and ambitions we have already alluded in Chapter V. On the day in question she sits in the shelter of the verandah, slowly rocking herself in a great cane-chair, the embroidery of light and shadow cast by the motionless leaves falling in picturesque chiaroscuric effect upon her handsome, artistically-draped figure.
Miss Mundella is in deep thought, and the long, dark lashes of her half-closed eyes are turned earthwards as she gently rocks herself to and fro. In front of the low-eaved station-house, on a withered grass-plot,—a futile attempt at a tennis-lawn,—two of the house cats are bounding in turns over a small brown snake, trying to get an opportunity of breaking the angry reptile’s back with their sharp teeth. Upon the verandah a few emerald lizards are chasing the house-flies; and, looking through the passage to the quadrangle at the back of the house, where the store, bachelors’ quarters, and kitchen buildings are situated, we can see the dark-skinned, brightly-dressed aboriginal “house-gins” as they prowl about, grinning and chattering over the preparation of “tucker long a boss,” or master’s dinner. It is nearly “tiffen time,”—a term for the midday repast copied by Australians from their Anglo-Indian brethren,—and Miss Mundella, who acts as housekeeper to her uncle, having finished her light household duties for the day, is now giving herself up to her thoughts anent the scheme which so nearly concerns our young friend Claude Angland.
A casual male observer, with the average amount 145 of discernment and experience of the fair sex, would doubtless have decided in his own mind that this young thinker, with the low forehead and dark, pronounced eyebrows, was pondering over her next new costume, or perhaps of some rival’s successes. For the young lady’s thoughts are evidently intense, and also unpleasant. But neither dress, envy, nor in fact any of those other common troubles that come to ruffle the soft feathers of ordinary maidens’ meditations, ever disturb the firm balanced mind of Miss Lileth Mundella.
“I will make myself honoured, obeyed, perhaps even loved, by means of that one talisman that has survived the ages, and can still work efficiently in this extremely practical world in which I find myself. Money alone will give me the social position which will make life worth living. I will strive to make myself rich.” This had been the young lady’s keynote of thought and action since the day when she found herself dependent upon an uncle’s generosity. Much had it marred the original beauty of her pure, ?sthetic soul.
In addition to her duties as hostess and commander-in-chief over the native contingent of her widower-uncle’s household, Lileth was also his secretary.
The ladies of an up-country squatter’s family very often act in this capacity, for they are generally better educated than the ‘boss,’ and, moreover, have plenty of leisure time.
Miss Mundella was glad to find herself in this position of trust, for it afforded her the means she sought of strengthening her hands for the ambitious coup d’état, that she intended to put into practice 146 some day. Already Giles’s niece had profited by the opportunities her secretaryship gave her, by learning far more of her uncle’s past career than that jolly-looking, selfishly-cunning, middle-aged gentleman had any idea.
Wilson Giles was afraid of his niece. A fast youth had enervated his mental powers considerably, and without knowing it, he fell by degrees nearly entirely under the almost mesmeric influence of Lileth’s dark eyes and powerful will, whilst yet he fondly half-flattered himself that he was only acting the part of the “generous relation.” The two had only had one serious struggle for supremacy: it was in reference to Miss Mundella’s brother. This young man had held a position in a southern bank for some years, but being discovered in running a nice little private discount and loan business over the “teller’s counter” at which he presided, he was forced to seek fresh fields of labour.
Lileth won the battle with her uncle, “hands down,” and her brother became a “rouse about” (apprentice on a run) at Murdaro station.
That her uncle was indebted to a large amount to the late Dr. Dyesart she knew well; she believed the two men, also, to be partners in the run. But this was one of the few things she found herself unable to pry fully into. Miss Mundella had taken charge of the letter from the dead explorer, which faithful Billy had curiously brought to the very station his late master had been so much interested in. She had, moreover, carefully opened the packet which contained the message from the dead; not from idle curiosity, but with the idea that it probably contained something147 that would assist her in her plans. The words of the letter she saw at once clearly pointed to three things: firstly, a reparation or gift to be made to some one through the nephew; secondly, a command to this nephew to visit the grave of the writer; thirdly, a suspicion of the honesty of squatters,—possibly a concealed distrust of her uncle Wilson Giles himself.
Miss Mundella’s first thoughts were to destroy the letter, but upon consideration she thought she saw in it a means of obtaining further command over her uncle, and so sent it on its road to New Zealand.
She must act, and act quickly, for her brother had informed her from Sydney of young Angland’s departure for the north; but before she could move in the matter she must know more of the relations that had existed between Dyesart and her uncle.
The young lady is sitting wrapped in these cogitations, oblivious of the snake-hunting cats and meteoric lizards, when we first see her, rocking herself gently under the cool and shady verandah. Presently a light step is heard in the large room whose French windows open upon Miss Mundella’s leafy retreat, and the little figure of an aboriginal girl appears, her dark limbs and cream-coloured gown making her resemble one of those composite statues of bronze and marble.
It is Dina, Miss Lileth’s special handmaiden. Caught as a child, she is the sole surviving member of a once great Otero, or tribal-family, which was annihilated by the Black Police some eight years before, at a “rounding-up” of the natives in the neighbourhood.
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It is she alone, as we see her, of all the house-gins, or unpaid native women, who are employed about “Government House,” that is decorated with that insignia of civilized female servitude,—a white lace cap; and though Dina looks to-day slightly untidy, one generally sees her glossy, luxuriant locks of jetty hair as neatly stowed away beneath the natty ornament before mentioned as Phyllis of old herself could have desired.
Dina stalks slowly towards her mistress, with a grin of respectful humility wrinkling her dark, shiny face, which would be beautiful but for that excessively triangular appendage, her nose. Suddenly, however, remembering that “missie” has threatened her with a flogging if she appears before that lady without her stockings on, she sneaks off again, softly as a bat upon the wing, and presently reappears with her calfless lower limbs clothed in neat white cotton and shod with highly polished shoes.
The girl stands for some time with her arms akimbo, and her white-palmed hands resting open upon the waistband of her short gown, meekly waiting for her mistress to notice her. But Miss Mundella’s thoughts are far away. So Dina at last looks round for something with which to while away the time.
A large beetle, with tesselated-pavement back and enormous antenn?, presently attracts her attention, and squatting down the dusky maiden plays with it, till the frightened insect escapes through a joint between the floor-boards. However, she soon finds fresh amusement in the troubles of a mantis religiosa, which has foolishly attempted to cross the thin brown stream of hurrying ants that extends from 149 the house to their mound, a hundred yards away. Dina’s childish face beams with fun as she watches the contest. She is not cruel,—few Australian natives delight in seeing pain in any form,—but she is, like many of her sex, white and black, indifferent, that is all; content to be amused, and forgetful of the suffering anything may feel so long as it pleasantly tickles her sense of the humorous. The mantis on the path by the verandah is invulnerable to the ants’ attack, save at two points,—its soft tail and long, facile neck. On the other hand, the mode of warfare employed by those tiny, insect bull-dogs, the emmets, is simplicity itself. Laying hold of whatever part of the intruder’s awkward body happens to come near them, they “freeze on,” their hind legs being used as drag-breaks to impede the mantis’s forward march. The mantis, although covered with busy foes, marches on, with that prayerful aspect—the beseeching, upturned head and pious, folded, hand-like front-legs—that has earned it its name. Ever and anon some enterprising ant ventures to attack the weak points already alluded to of this insect Achilles; then are the lately-folded mandible claws deliberately brought into play, and the enemy is crushed, even as a nut is broken in a pair of nut-crackers.
The solemn, preoccupied air of the bigger insect, and the plucky onslaught of its tiny foes, at last cause Dina to forget her state of bondage, also the august presence of her mistress, and she bursts into a merry fit of laughter. Her hilarity, however, ceases as suddenly as it commences.
“Dina, what are you doing there?” comes the clear, contralto voice of Miss Mundella.
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The culprit stands before “missie” with downcast eyes and trembling figure.
“Your cap is half off your head, and your stockings are coming down. You have forgotten to tie your shoe-laces. And why have you not an apron on? Don’t you remember the flogging you received for forgetting what I told you about your coming to me in an untidy state? Be off and get yourself straight at once, and hurry that lazy Sophy with tiffen. Marmie (master) will soon be back.”
Miss Lileth always refrains from employing that foolish pigeon-English that generally obtains amongst Australian settlers in their conversations with aborigines. And she has found herself perfectly understood and implicitly obeyed since she first arrived at the station, and established her authority by having the house-gins flogged for the slightest misbehaviour, till they were thoroughly “broken into her ways,” as she pleasantly termed it.
Dina, who had come to ask her mistress for leave of absence for the next day, is afraid to do so now, and instead bursts into a theatrical cry, with her knuckles rubbing her eyes and tears rolling down her ludicrously-wrinkled face and dusky bosom. The moment the girl thinks herself out of sight, however, she is transformed into a laughing little nigger once more.
She stands in the passage giggling with all her might at the sight of the youngest house-gin, Lucy, ?tat ten summers, who out in the quadrangle at the back is up to one of her favourite tricks. This consists of imitating the ungraceful waddle of that head of the culinary department, “Terrible Billy,” the old man-cook.
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Poor little, large-mouthed, wriggling Lucy loves to get behind the spare, hardship-twisted, little old man as he crosses the yard, and burlesque his every action, to the delight of the black heads that appear at the doors and windows, and grin white-teethed plaudits at the little actress’s histrionic powers.
Every action of Lucy’s lithe little body, every gleam of her cunning little black eyes, was wicked to a degree. Needless to say, her powers of mimicry were perfect. Nothing escaped her active examination. To see the suddenness with which she could flash from merriment to passive stupidity when discovered in her pranks, or when Terrible Billy—a harmless, old periodical-drunkard retainer of Mr. Giles, whose awkward, stumbling gait she imitated exactly—turned round, was worth a good deal. Her bended little body shaking with bubbling merriment in her single garment of an old gown; the thin, ugly little face, against which her tiny black hands are pressed, as if to stifle the sound of her giggles, whilst she hobbles after the dilapidated old model; and then when he turns, flash! Lucy has changed as quickly into a dull, sad-looking child, who has apparently never known what laughter means, and has thoughts for nothing evidently but her work, to which she is sullenly creeping when “the Terrible” changes his position, and looks suspiciously at her with his bleared old eyes.
Dina is looking at and enjoying the fun, and quick as both she and Lucy are, they are caught by Miss Mundella, who has followed her untidy handmaid to the door.
Lileth says nothing, but rebukes the laggard Dina with a look so fraught with cruel meaning that the152 black girl melts into real tears this time, as her mistress returns to her seat on the verandah.
The sound of wheels is now heard approaching, and a buck-board buggy (a kind of light chaise) appears, driven by an elderly gentleman, with a very red face and very white linen suit and hat.
The trap is pulled up near the house, and the driver, taking a boatswain’s whistle from his pocket, blows a couple of shrill notes thereon, when two native boys, in dirty moleskin trousers turned up to the knee and grey flannel shirts, hasten up and take their station at the horses’ heads.
The occupant of the buggy, however, does not release the reins, but, calling up first one boy and then the other, hits each a couple of stinging cuts with his driving whip round their bare legs, and makes the recipients roar with agony.
“I’ll teach you to keep me waiting, you black beggars!” the red-faced man roars. “Couldn’t you hear me coming? Now, Tarbrush, yer’d better look out, for, swelp me, but if I have any more of your durned laziness I’ll flay you alive, like I did your cursed brother Bingo!”
“Now, look alive, and take the mare and water her,” the speaker continues in a calmer voice, “and mind you put a soft pair of hobbles on her. You can let Joe go in the horse paddock. It’s your turn, Dandie, to get the horses to-morrow, and if you keep me a minute after seven o’clock I’ll loosen some of your black hide, swelp me if I don’t.”
The speaker, who is Mr. Wilson Giles, now gets out of the trap, and taking his whip in one hand and a revolver that he always has with him in the buggy153 in the other, he toddles with the usual short steps of a bushman to the house, just nodding a brief “good-morning” to his niece as he crosses the verandah.
Mr. Giles is, as we have said, an elderly man, but he has rather grown old through his kind of life than the number of his years. A somewhat corpulent man too is he, with a heavy, sensual countenance, on the sides of which, in pale contrast to his scarlet face, are ragged, light-red whiskers. The expression upon this gentleman’s face before strangers is generally either a look of suspicious cunning or an affected one of jolly frankness,—the latter having once formed an ample cloak for many a mean action, but, being now worn threadbare, is less useful than its owner still fondly imagines it to be.
After copious “nips” of whisky and soda-water, Mr. Giles presently throws himself into a chair before the elegantly provisioned table, where his niece and a middle-aged gentleman have already taken their places, and immediately betrays the fact, by the impartial way in which he thrusts his knife into meat, butter, cheese, and preserves, that he is either an eccentric or an ill-educated man.
“Come outside, I want to speak to you,” he grunts to his niece, when he has finished a very rapid repast, quite ignoring throughout the presence of the third person at the table. This is Mr. Cummercropper, the store- and book-keeper of the run, who, being a new arrival in the wilds, has not yet been able to obtain that point of rapid consumption of diet at which most station folk are adepts.
“I will be with you shortly, uncle,” Miss Mundella replies, and proceeds to enter into a conversation upon 154 music and art with the polished storekeeper, who is the very opposite of his highly inflamed “boss.”
Mr. Cummercropper is hopelessly in love with Lileth, like most of the men this young lady thinks it worth while to be civil to. It is a curious feature about Lileth’s male acquaintances that they soon become hot admirers or warm haters of the dark-eyed, haughty young lady.
“Oh, you’ve come at last, have you?” Mr. Giles says, as his niece sweeps to her chair on the verandah, and she knows by experience that his bullying air is the result of something having annoyed or puzzled him, and that probably he will end what he has to say by asking her advice. But her uncle must “blow off his steam,” as he sometimes calls it, on somebody, and a scapegoat must be found before he will become quiet enough to talk sensibly. So Lileth’s first act is to pacify her uncle in the following way.
“Before you begin,” she says, “I want you to have Dina and Lucy beaten. You had better have it done at once, because the Rev. Mr. Harley may be here this afternoon. He said he would try and do his circuit in one month this time.”
“Oh, you needn’t mind Harley,” replies Mr. Giles; “he knows better than to interfere with our ways, Lileth. Besides, he used to ‘dress’ his wife’s little gin down proper at Croydon last year. Even the squatters at the hotel he was stopping at kicked up a row about it. The servant gals told me the little nigger’s back was pretty well scored. What have the gals been doing now?”
“Oh, I don’t really think that it is worth while my going into the long exposition of household155 arrangements that an explanation would necessitate.”
Mr. Giles looks sideways at the calm dark eyes that are lazily looking upwards, as their owner sits slowly rocking her chair by his side.
“I’ll soon fix their hash for them,” he growls forth at last, feeling glad of the opportunity to wreak his anger on somebody. Then he whistles upon the boatswain’s call, which had once before that morning heralded a punishment, and shortly a big native appears, whose well-pronounced nasal bones proclaim him to belong to a Cape York or Torres Straits tribe. The black’s oily face is surmounted by an old cabbage-tree hat, and he wears trousers and shirt like the other boys; but he also rejoices in a pair of Blucher boots, of which he is inordinately proud.
“Here, Carlo,” says Mr. Giles, in the curious pigeon-English already referred to, “you know that um fellow waddy (that stick); him sit down alonger office (it is in the office); mine beat it black fellow (my black fellow beater). You fetch um along.” The oily face lights up with a smile of anticipation, for he it is that generally acts the part of executioner, and “combs down the gals” by Marmie’s orders when it is needed in the cause of discipline. As a member of an alien tribe, Carlo returns the hatred of the station blacks with interest.
The waddy, a long-handled “cat” of six tails, made of leather, is brought to Mr. Giles.
“Go and catch Lucy and Dina,” says that gentleman.
Both uncle and niece sit in silence till the girls arrive, the two miserable creatures having been found 156 at the collection of huts close by, known as the native camp, where they had run to hide on seeing Carlo take the whip to the “boss.”
“Don’t move till I come back. Won’t be long,” murmurs the squatter rising, and presently the yells and screams of the two girls are heard down by the stockyard, where the boss is standing admiring their graceful, naked bodies as they writhe beneath the lash wielded by the brawny Carlo.
Mr. Giles returns quite an altered man. Either the enjoyable sight he has just witnessed, or a couple of “pegs” of whisky he swallowed medicinally afterwards, has sweetened his soul for the time being.
“Well, niece,” he said, sitting down, “I’ve done your little job. And now I want you to listen to what I’m going to tell you, and tell me what you think of it.” Miss Mundella’s handsome, white-draped figure rocks a little faster than before, but her eyes remain still fixed on the leaves above her head.
“You know, Lileth, I think,—no, I’m pretty sure you do,—that I’d have gone a ‘broker,’”—the black eyes flash a rebuke at him for the slang he presumes to use before her. “Oh, you know what I mean. I’d have had to have filed in ’85 if it hadn’t been for Dr. Dyesart turning up trumps and lending me some of the ready. Well, when the doctor died he held promissory notes of mine for nearly ￡20,000. D’you know, niece, why he lent me the money?”
After a short pause the speaker continued, “But I don’t know why I should tell you. Likely enough I’ll be sorry for it to-morrow.”
“If you think I can advise you, uncle, the more I know about the matter the easier can I come to a decision. That is your excuse for telling me and mine for listening to what would otherwise not interest me.”
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DINA’S FLOGGING.
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“Well, I suppose that’s logic, Lileth. At any rate, Dr. Dyesart, I may tell you, was once engaged to be married to my late wife, to the mother of Glory and Georgie.”
“Indeed, uncle, and how long is it since poor Aunt Mary was engaged to him?”
“Don’t exactly know. I never saw Dyesart till about five years ago—two years after the death of my poor old wom——, of your aunt.” The speaker hastily corrects his lapsus lingu?, glancing at his niece meanwhile, and continues:—
“Dyesart comes here. Glory and little George,—Lord, what I’d give to find out what’s become of my little George,” and a tear moistens the inflamed orbits of Mr. Giles,—“Glory was playing with George on the verandah here. The doctor speaks to them, and was telling Glory he was an old friend of her mother’s when I arrived on the scene. ‘My name’s Dyesart,’ said he; ‘let me speak to you in private. I had the honour of knowing the late Mrs. Giles, your wife.’”
Miss Mundella’s chair ceases rocking, and that lady’s eyes watch her uncle’s lips.
“He told me,” continued Mr. Giles, “and I will just cut what he said as short as I can, that he was a wealthy man and a bachelor; that his agents in Sydney had told him Murdaro station would probably be in the market before long; also that he had discovered that the lady to whom he had once been engaged in England had married me, the proprietor159 of Murdaro, and was dead. He had come up to see the place, as it was interesting to him. Well, the doctor went into a rapture over Glory,—who’s neat enough, I believe, but wasn’t a patch on little Georgie. ‘She’s like your late missus,’ he said; and then before I knew it he offered me money on loan without interest, enough to put me on my feet again.”
“It was he that gave Glory her money, then?” asks Miss Mundella, showing for the first time her interest in her uncle’s narrative.
“Yes, he did all that he did do in a real gentlemanly way, I’ll say that for him,” returned Mr. Giles, lighting one of two green-leaf cigars that Johnnie, the Chinese gardener, presents to his boss about this time every day. “Whilst I’m on the subject I may as well tell you that I find Dyesart’s death doesn’t affect Glory’s money; I’ve got a satisfactory letter from my Brisbane lawyers about that.
“Now I have told you pretty well all, Lileth. Is there anything else you’d like to know?”
“Well, yes, uncle; first, how are you situated as regards funds—money matters—now? I should like to know particularly before I ask any more questions.” As she ceases speaking Miss Mundella cannot help glancing scornfully at her relative, for she sees he is afraid to ask her advice, although his object in opening up the conversation was to do this. But her look changes as the thought enters her brain, “Is this story of the money the real and sole reason of his anxiety?”
“Well, I’m tight pressed,” replies Mr. Giles, looking nervously at his niece; “that confounded spec. of160 mine on the MacArthur River was a stiffener for me, and for better men than me too.”
“You could not refund the money lent you by Dyesart if his executors,”—the young lady watches her uncle as she speaks, and sees that gentleman’s rather washy eyes open a little bit wider and become fixed, a sign that expresses in his physiognomy what turning pale would in most other men,—“could you refund this money if his executors were to press you to do so?”
“Jupiter! No!” gasps Mr. Giles, without an apology for the oath. Indeed, neither notice it in their interest in the matter in hand.
“What would you have to do if you were forced to repay this ￡20,000, say, to his nephew Angland?”
“I’d have to sell every beast on the run,” gasps Mr. Giles, his eyes protruding more than ever, “and I’d have to sell my own carcase into the bargain,” he adds, coarsely.
“You must please control yourself, uncle, or I must go indoors,” murmurs Lileth, leaning back in her chair.
“Oh, you’re not inquisitive about hearing any more, ar’n’t you?” begins Mr. Giles, angrily. “You are a woman, although you’ve got brains, and you needn’t pretend——” But the uncle is obliged to nip his ungallant speech in the bud, and afterwards to apologise for it; for his niece rises to leave him, and he feels he cannot afford to quarrel with her at any price.
“Well, uncle,” the young lady inquires, “would you be sorry if these promissory notes were found?”
“Why, of course. They’d ruin the whole bilin’ of us.” Mr. Giles’s answer, coming as it does from a161 mouth whose chin is sunk upon a desponding breast, is scarcely audible.
“With the exception of Glory?”
“Oh, her money’s all right; can’t touch hers.”
“You have tried, then,” thinks Lileth, “and this is the reason you inquired about it. You are desperate. The game is mine if I play my cards carefully.”
“Well, uncle,” she continues, “there are only two ways that I can see to get rid of this awkward state of affairs.”
“What’s them?” comes the snappish inquiry.
“Either to find out a means of getting at and destroying these P.N.’s, or——” Here Miss Mundella pauses so long that her uncle’s face grows redder than ever with excitement, till at last he bursts out impatiently, “Or what?”
“Or destroy the means this young Angland has of finding where the notes are.”
“Can either of these things be done?”
“Yes, the latter.”
“How can it be done?”
“By means of money.”
“Who will do it?”
“I will.”
Mr. Giles cogitates for a minute or two.
“You know more of this matter than you pretend.”
“Than I pretend!” The young lady expresses her surprise at this accusation in her sweetest tones.
“Well, then, than you have told me, if you like that way of putting it better. You’re a clever gal, and have more ‘savez’ than I have in a matter like this.” The speaker’s eyes withdraw into his head, and he feels more cheerful and hopeful as he goes on speaking.
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He ends by placing the whole affair in his niece’s hands for her to fight out for him.
Lileth has her fish in the shallows now, but she knows she must not startle him till her landing net is safely under and around the prize. So putting a little softer intonation into her voice, and rising from her seat, she goes to her uncle’s side.
“Uncle, I am only a poor orphan,” she begins, looking almost through Mr. Giles’s downcast eyelids. Mr. Giles can feel the power of his niece’s glance and fairly trembles, for he is always most afraid of her when she speaks thus softly.
“You have given my brother and myself a home,” goes on the young lady. “We owe you everything. I can help you and I will.”
Mr. Giles breathes more freely, but he would hardly have done so if he had known that Miss Mundella only wanted to make him easier for a moment in order to insure his feeling shy of having the whole trouble back on his own shoulders again.
“But, uncle, I have my good name to think of. I must risk that and a good deal more besides in forwarding these interests of yours. I owe it to Mr. Puttis as well as to myself to ask you if you will make me some token of regard, of appreciation, if I clear this trouble out of your way.”
“Anything you like,” Mr. Giles murmurs sleepily, almost as if the words were somebody else’s and he was simply repeating them.
“I have thought out a plan of releasing you entirely from your indebtedness, but both myself and my future husband will have to risk everything in doing163 it. Will you promise to give me a quarter share in the run if I succeed?”
Mr. Wilson Giles’s tenderest point is touched at this request, and the pain wakes up his courage for a moment or two.
“You’re not afraid of opening your mouth to ask,” he says, fighting his ground as he retreats. “You know I’ve never given up all hopes of finding little George some day. I don’t believe the niggers that stole him killed him, or I’d have heard of it. I’d look nice if I gave away what’s to be his some day if he turned up afterwards, wouldn’t I?”
“If you make me a partner in the run I’ll help you. If not, I’ll marry Mr. Puttis at once, as he wishes me to do, and go to Brisbane. I don’t mind,” adds Lileth, pausing for a moment, “agreeing to give up to poor Georgie half my share if he ever returns to you.
“I shall want a written and signed agreement, uncle,” she observes, as she leaves him to enter the house, “before I commence work.” Then at the doorway she turns and remarks, in a careless tone of voice, “You may like to know that Angland—Dyesart’s nephew—has already left Sydney, and may be here any day.”
This last bit of news was just what was wanted to complete the subjugation of Mr. Giles to his niece’s will. How did she know of this news about Angland? Why, of course, from that young devil of a nephew of his, whom he had bribed to intercept the dead explorer’s approaching relative. His own rough-and-ready plan had failed; perhaps his niece’s scheme would succeed. Anyhow, it was best to have her164 on his side, for otherwise she might consider it best for herself to make young Angland fall in love with her. She could do that, if she liked, Giles felt certain. The squatter rises and paces up and down the creaking floor of the verandah restlessly at the thought.
“Fool that I was to let that black boy of the doctor’s escape me,” he murmurs aloud. “Torture and money would have made him reveal the grave to me. It is in that grave, or near it, where the secret that can blast and ruin me lies. If that girl knew that secret she would kill me without compunction. I know it. At any risk she must remain on my side till the danger is past.”
So the agreement is signed and handed to Miss Mundella that night. And the dark eyes flash like unto Diana’s upon a successful mythological hunting morning as Lileth’s steady pen directs two telegrams,—one for Inspector Puttis, which we saw him read at Ulysses, and another to an influential admirer of hers in the office of the Commissioner of Police, Brisbane. And then the active brain falls to pondering over the something that she believes her uncle kept back from her that afternoon.