Rosa Campbell Praed

“ I know you, Elsie; how true and good and pure you are in the very depths of your nature! You have only been playing at life, and at love. You haven't known anything of evil, or of the realities of the world. It may be that only in marriage you will learn what love means—and oh, if it might be for me to teach you! You have never cared for anyone in the real sense of the word. Of course I know that you don't care and never have cared for me in that way, though I believe that you have a more solid affection for me than you ever had for anyone."
"That is true, Frank." ”

“ Just now there was a truce between Elsie and Minnie Pryde. Minnie thought it more diplomatic, on the whole, to be good friends with her rival.
"Well, I'm glad of that," said Elsie, a little disdainfully: "I don't know why you should say that I cut you out."
"With a certain sort of man," replied Miss Pryde, weighing her words as though she were mentally discriminating. "There are some men who might like a girl like me best. But the English sort—and some of the Australian, for of course the Halletts are Australian—and men of a mysterious kind—heroes of romance—such as Mr. Blake—go in for you. ”

“ Elsie turned fiercely upon Blake. Her eyes were flashing; her bosom heaving.
"What right have you to say that I was beaten? You said that I—that I cared for you. What reason did I give you for thinking so? Wasn't I playing the game, too? Do you think I have fallen so low as to give my heart to a man who—who has shown me that he despises me. I despise you, Mr. Blake; I hate you."
Blake stood perfectly immovable. "I am glad of that," he said quietly. "I wish you to hate me. But you are quite wrong in the other thing. I do not despise you."
"Why—why?" stammered Elsie. ”

“ But I think that the time has come now for me to speak."
"It is generous of you," she said, very low; "now when no one can respect me; when I have given the two—when Lord Astar and Mr. Blake have a right to despise me."
"They have no right," cried Frank. "You are yourself pure, sweet, womanly as you have been always. I don't know what has passed between you and Blake. I don't want to know. No man can be so unutterable a scoundrel as to despise a woman for loving him—and you love Blake, my poor Elsie. ”

“ Gropingly they felt their way along the gallery, and by and by emerged again into the moonlight, and stood on the ledge leading round to the Baròlin rock.
They walked on, skirting the precipice. Hallett could hardly repress an exclamation of astonishment at the lonely grandeur of the scene, and the almost entire inaccessibility of the spot. "No wonder Macpherson couldn't track them!" he said to himself.
The great rock of the human head looked strangely weird in the moonlight, with its withes of grey moss hanging like hair, and its majestic rugged outline of feature. Again Elsie drew him on. ”

“ Oh, a man who would follow his star at all costs. That is the man I should like to know."
"Go on," said Hallett. "Tell me more of what you would like in the man who made love to you."
"He must never pay me a compliment," said Elsie. "He must not want to do what I wish. He must make me do what he wishes. He must be my master."
"Oh," exclaimed Hallett, impatiently, "that is a Jane Eyre-ish idea. No man who truly loves a woman can be her master. To love is to be a slave." ”

“ She was not soft and slender and complex, like Elsie, but was a great Junoesque creature, with calm blue eyes and quantities of flaxen hair, a downright sort of girl, absolutely good-natured, a splendid horsewoman, a good tennis-player, always bright and smiling and equable, and in every way a desirable wife for a well-to-do squatter. Elsie did not actually dislike Rose, who did not want to give herself airs, though she had always seemed to hold herself aloof in a calmly superior way from the lesser fry of Leichardt's Town. ”

“ She could show him that if he despised her there were others more highly placed than he who thought her worthy of being lifted to a rank far beyond any that he could offer her. And yet—the stab was agony—she loved him. She had never realized it so keenly as now.
Mrs. Valliant watched her in breathless interest. She, too, had seen the flash of the diamonds, and she had no doubt of what the note contained. She, too, was in her way as innocent as her daughter. She knew nothing of the wickedness of the world or the ways of men like Lord Astar.
"Elsie," she cried, "Oh, tell me, what is it?" ”

“ Was it possible that in this manner Frank Hallett loved her? Why then was it that she felt no returning throb? Elsie wondered vaguely with some dim faint realization of the greatest of life's mysteries. But it was quite true that she had never loved. People had loved her, but she had never taken much account of what they felt and suffered. It occurred to her now that, perhaps, they had suffered a good deal, and that, perhaps, she might have been kinder.
"I have never taken life seriously enough," Elsie said to herself. "I have never taken love seriously either." ”

“ All the while Elsie was thinking of Blake's strange words, seeing in fancy the dark, dangerous eyes which already imagination pictured too often for her heart's peace. What had he meant by saying that his life was wild and precarious—he whose life seemed so steady and safe, who had just been elected member for Luya, who was going through the usual Leichardt's Town routine, and who would be at Tunimba for their picnic in the spring? Why was he afraid of loving her? Why should she not love him? ”

“ I mean to go against your Squatters' Land Bill, Miss Valliant. I mean to fight Mr. Hallett on all his points tooth and nail. I am fighting him now. We are enemies in open field, and you and yours are on his side of the battle."
"Oh, we are sisters of mercy—Ina and I," said Elsie, laughing. "In common charity one may bind up one's enemy's wounds."
"I think my wounds will keep till I get to Baròlin," he said, laughing, too. "They are not very serious: I will not put your and Lady Horace's loyalty to so severe a test. ”

“ Oh!" the girl's eyes dilated, and she suddenly stopped. She remembered the tall cloaked figure, the gleaming hilt of the revolver, the wild words, the flaming eyes. And then all came clear to her.
"Oh, God!" she cried, and fainted.
Never in all her life before to-day had Elsie fainted. Trant told her that she had been unconscious for a long time. When she came to herself he was chafing her hands with the tenderness of a woman. She asked him to leave her alone, and he went away. For a long time she lay on the grass and thought. ”

“ Trant, for I am very heavy—at one of the Leichardt's Town tennis parties, or at the Government House ball, or if I am to be imprisoned in one of the Luya gorges—do you recollect that?"
"Yes, I recollect, and I meant it. I warn you. I am not a man to stand tamely by and let another man carry off the girl he loves; especially when she doesn't love that other man. You in love with Frank Hallett, that stolid lump of respectability! You are meant for something different, Elsie. You are meant for life, for adventure, for emotion. ”

“ There was a look of exaltation on Elsie's face which Frank had never seen there before. It convinced him more than her words that she meant what she said.
"Frank," she went on, "if you will forgive me—and I know you will—be my brother, and let me be your sister. Let us always love each other in that way. Some day, perhaps, you may be——" She stopped herself. It seemed desecration to hint at the secret of the new-made widow. But at that moment an intuition came to her that Frank would many Ina, and that he would love Ina more truly than even he had loved herself. ”

“ I have been a vain, thoughtless girl all my life, and I never knew what love meant, the sacredness and the wonder and mystery of it, and how it is the one thing in the world that comes next to God and heaven. But I know now, and I know what you feel—that it is a crime, when we know, to marry without love. I don't love Frank; he is no more than a brother to me. And I do love Morres Blake with all my soul. ”

“ She was a good deal assisted in the effort by Lord Horace's present of a lace shawl, which, as she said, made her look fit to stand even beside Lady Waveryng in all her diamonds. To-night she was in a state of feverish excitement, almost as great as that of Elsie herself, and her delicate face, which had the remains of Elsie's beauty, was flushed like a girl's, as she put the last touches to Elsie's hair and dress. Elsie's dress had been a present, too, from Lord Horace. ”

“ Allanby is much cleverer than I am, and altogether more the kind of woman that men admire," she said, with some dignity. "I am quite willing that you should amuse yourself. I am quite aware that you have not always found me very entertaining. I—I often think, Horace, that our marriage was a great mistake"—Ina's voice faltered, but she went bravely on—"still it is a mistake that cannot be mended now. And if I thought you were wronging either Mrs. Allanby or me, or yourself by your flirtation, I think you would find that I did mind a little, and that I should not hesitate to say so." ”