‘Neuchamp, like a fool as he was, had evidently not written lately. The cousin (and a deuced fine girl, too, with pots of money of her own) had been staying up at Rainbar—a queer thing to do. Old Middleton, when bringing her to his place, had told every one that she was his friend Neuchamp’s cousin. It would be some time before Frankston or his daughter would find out the untruth of the report. In the meantime he would butter up the old man, humbug him with regret for his occasional “wildness,” promise all kinds of amendment and square behaviour for the future; then go straight to the girl, who, of course, could know nothing of his life and time, and say, “Here am I, Hardy Baldacre, with a half share in Baredown, Gogeldra, and No-good-damper (hang it; I must change that)—anyway, three of the best cattle properties of the south; here am I, not the worst-looking fellow going, at your service. Take me, and we’re off to Melbourne or Tasmania for a wedding-trip, and that stuck-up beggar Neuchamp may marry his cousin, and go up King Street the next week for all we care.” I shan’t say the last bit. But it will occur to her. Women always think of everything, though they don’t say it. That might fetch her. Anyhow, the odds are right. I’m on!’ This exceedingly practical soliloquy having been transacted at his hotel during the performance of his toilette, Mr. Baldacre partook of the matutinal soda-and-brandy generally necessary for the perfect restoration of his nerves, and breakfasted, with a settled resolution to call at Morahmee that afternoon. This intention he carried out. He found Antonia apparently not unwilling to receive him upon a more intimate conversational footing than he ever recollected having been accorded to him. She was in that state of anxiety, unhappiness, and nervous irritability which makes the patient only too willing to fly to the relief afforded by a certainty even of evil. The climber upon Alpine heights, with shuddering death-cry, ever and anon casts himself into the awful chasm on the verge of which his limbs trembled and his overwrought brain reeled. The overtaxed sufferer under the pangs of mortal disease chooses death rather than the continuance of the pitiless torment. So the agonised heart, poised on the dread pinnacle of doubt, flees to the Lethean peace of despair. Having not unskilfully brought the conversation round to the subject of Miss Neuchamp, Mr. Baldacre touched, with more or less humour, on certain unguarded remarks of that inexperienced but decided traveller. He enlarged, as if accidentally, upon her good looks and apparent cleverness, giving her the benefit of a tremendous reputation for learning of the abstrusest kind, and generally exaggerating all the circumstances which might render probable the admiration of an ultra-refined aristocrat.