along the short garden path and up the veranda steps.

'Morning, Mrs Gildea ... a heavy mail for you!'

He planked down the usual editorial packet—two or three rolls of proofs, a collection of newspapers, a bulky parcel of private correspondence sent on by the porter of Mrs Gildea's London flat, some local letters and, finally, two square envelopes, with the remark, as he turned away on his round. 'My word! Mrs Gildea, those letters seem to have done a bit of globe-trotting on their own, don't they!'

For the envelopes were covered with directions, some in Japanese and Chinese hieroglyphics, some in official red ink from various postoffices, a few with the distinctive markings of British Legations and Government Houses where the Special Correspondent should have stayed, but did not—Only her own name showing through the obliterations, and a final re-addressing by the Bank of Leichardt's Land.

Mrs Gildea recognised the impulsive, untidy but characteristic handwriting of Lady Bridget O'Hara.

'From Biddy at last!' she exclaimed, tore the flap of number one letter, paused and laid it aside. 'Business first.'

So she went carefully through the editorial communication. Mr Gibbs was not quite so tiresome as she had feared he would be. After him, the packet from her London flat was inspected and its contents laid aside for future perusal. Next, she tackled the local letters. One was embossed with the Bank of Leichardt's Land stamp and contained a cablegram originally despatched from Rome, which had been received at Vancouver and, thence, had pursued her—first along the route originally designed, afterwards, with zigzagging, retrogression and much delay, along the one she had taken. That it had reached her at all, said a good deal for Mrs Gildea's fame as a freely paragraphed newspaper correspondent.

The telegram was phrased thus:

SORRY IMPOSSIBLE NO FUNDS OTHER REASONS WRITING BIDDY

Mrs Gildea's illuminative 'H'm!' implied that her two inductions had been correct. No funds—and other reasons—meaning—a MAN. She scented instantly another of Biddy's tempestuous love-affairs. Had it been merely a question of lack of money with inclination goading, she felt pretty certain that Lady Bridget would have contrived to beg, borrow or steal—on a hazardous promissory note, after the happy-go-lucky financial morals of that section of society to which by birth she belonged. Or, failing these means, that she would have threatened some mad enterprise and so have frightened her aunt Eliza Countess of Gaverick into writing a cheque for three figures. Of course, less would have been of no account.

Mrs Gildea opened the two envelopes and sorted the pages in order of their dates. The first had the address of a house in South Belgravia, where lived Sir Luke Tallant of the Colonial Office and Rosamond his wife—distant connections of the Gavericks.

Lady Bridget's letters were type-written, most carelessly, with the mistakes corrected down the margin of the flimsy sheets in the manner of author's proof—the whole appearance of them suggesting literary 'copy'.

Likewise, the slapdash epistolary style of the MS., which had a certain vividness of its own.

CHAPTER 2

'Dearest Joan,

You'll have got my wire. Vancouver was right, I suppose. I sent it from Rome. Since then I have been at Montreux with Chris and Molly, and since I came back to England with them, I've been in too chaotic a state of mind to write letters. Really, Chris and Molly's atmosphere of struggling to keep in the swim on next to nothing a year and of eking out a precarious income by visits to second-rate country houses and cadging on their London friends gets on my nerves to such an extent that Luke and Rosamond's established "Colonial Office" sort of respectability is quite refreshing by contrast.

I should have loved the Australian trip. Your "Bush" sounds perfectly captivating, and, of course, I could do the illustrations you want. Besides, I'm stony-broke and, financially, the great god Gibbs appeals to me. I'd take my passage straight off—one would raise the money somehow—if it wasn't for—There! It's out. A MAN has come and upset the apple-cart.'

Mrs Gildea gave a funny little laugh. The letter answered her thought.

'"Oh, of course!" I can hear you sneer. "Just another of Biddy's emotional interests—bound to fizzle out before very long." But this is a good deal more than an emotional interest, and I don't think it will fizzle out so quickly. For one thing, THIS man is quite different from all the other men I've ever been interested in. The first moment I saw him, I had the queerest sort of ARRESTED sensation. He's told me since, that he felt exactly the same about me. Kind of lived before—"WHEN I WAS A KING IN BABYLON AND YOU WERE A CHRISTIAN SLAVE" idea. Though I'm quite certain that if I ever was a slave it must have been a Pagan and not a Christian one. Joan, the experience was thrilling, positively electrifying—Glamour—personal magnetism.... You couldn't possibly understand unless you knew HIM. Descriptions are so hopeless. I'll leave him to your imagination.

By the way, Molly annoyed me horribly the other day. "You know, dear," she had the audacity to remark, "he's not of OUR class, and if you married him, you'd have to give up US! For could you suppose," she went on to say, "that Chris and Mama—to say nothing of Aunt Eliza—would tolerate an adventurer who tells tall stories about buried treasure and native rebellions and expects one to be amused!"

OUR CLASS! Oh, how I detest the label! And that unspeakably dreadful idea of social sheep and goats—and the unfathomable abyss between Suburbia and Belgravia! Though I frankly own that to me Suburbia represents the Absolutely Impossible. After all, one must go right into the Wilderness to escape the conditions of that state of life to which you happen to have been born.

Well, that speech of Molly's came out of a fascinating account my Soldier of Fortune gave us of how he stage-managed a revolution in South America, and of an expedition he'd made in the Andes on the strength of a local tradition about the Incas' hidden gold. I call him my Soldier of Fortune—though he's not in any known Army list, because it's what he called himself. Likewise a Champion of the Dispossessed. He has an intense sympathy with the indigenous populations, and thinks the British system of conquering and corrupting native races simply a disgrace to civilisation. With all of which sentiments I entirely agree. Luke has taken to him immensely, chiefly, I fancy, because he was once private secretary to some Administrating Rajah in an Eastern-Archipelago or Indian Island, and as Luke is hankering after a colonial governorship, he wants to scrape up all the information he can about such posts.

I answered Molly that one may have a violent attraction to a man without in the least wanting to marry him, and that relieved her mind a little.

As for HIM, the attraction on his part seems equally violent. We do the most shockingly unconventional things together. He tells me that I carry him off his feet—that I've revolutionised his ideas about the "nice English Girl" (useless to protest that I'm not an English girl but a hybrid Celt). He says that I've wiped off his slate the scheme of life he'd been planning for his latter years. A comfortable existence in England—his doctor advises him to settle down in a temperate climate—an appointment on some City Board—rubber shares and that kind of thing—you know it all—a red brick house in South Kensington and perhaps a little place in the country. He did not fill in the picture—but I did for him—with the charmingly domesticated wife—well connected: the typical "nice English Girl," heiress of a comfortable fortune to supplement his own, which he