This was an unlooked-for piece of good fortune. Ernest was much relieved in mind at being freed from the dilemma of returning Augusta as a kind of captive princess of Rainbar, or undertaking an expensive and inopportune journey for the sole purpose of accompanying her to a place which she never should have quitted. Mr. Middleton, confident of securing provender, now that he had commenced to approach the confines of civilisation, was not sorry to be provided with a young lady companion, having had of late much of his own unrelieved society; and Augusta was more pleased than she cared to show at the prospect of escape from this Sahara existence, without the prestige of the desert or the novelty of Arabs. That night her portmanteau was packed, Tottie coming in for the reversion of as much raiment as constituted her an authority in fashions ‘on the river’ ever after, and such a _douceur_ as confirmed her in Mr. Bank’s high estimate of Miss Neuchamp as a ‘real lady.’ At six o’clock next morning Augusta Neuchamp bade farewell for ever to the abode of the Australian representative of her ancient house. ‘When shall I see you in Sydney, Ernest?’ she said, as a last inquiry. ‘I daresay they will wish to know at Morahmee.’ ‘When the rain comes,’ said Ernest resolutely. ‘Good-bye, Middleton; take great care of her. Remember me to the ladies.’ And they were off. It has been more than once remarked by those of our species who rely for their intellectual recreation less upon action than observation, that great events are apt to be produced by inconsiderable causes. The sighing summer breeze sets free the mountain avalanche. The spark creates the red ruin of a conflagration. The rat in Holland perforates a dam and floods a province. Mr. Neuchamp sat in his apartment at Rainbar contrasting, doubtfully, his regret at the departure of his cousin with his recovered sense of freedom and independence. True, she was the sole link which in Australia connected him with the thousand spells of home. But, ever angular in mind, she had proved herself to be so incapable of accommodation to the necessarily altered conditions of a new land, that he had despaired of her acclimatisation. She had even failed to comprehend them. ‘This is the result,’ he would assert to himself, ‘of her deficiency in the faculty of imagination. It may be there are other reasons, but I trace her special failure in _camaraderie_ to this neglect of her fairy godmother.’