It was a beautiful day in January, rather too hot for travelling in comfort, but pleasant and breezy about the Adelonga-hills and the bosky garden that sheltered the old house. It was the same old house still, Rachel was thankful to see. Mr. Thornley had been building with brick and stone in town, and so had been content to leave to his country seat, the picturesque charm of its wooden walls and its medley of low roofs and gables; and now it stood embowered in cool vine leaves and sweet-scented creepers, with great trees of pink oleander, which loved the sultry midsummer, nestling up against it, and making broad splashes of sunny colour amid the sombre richness of evergreen shrubs--a sort of earthly paradise in Rachel's eyes. Lucilla was standing on the verandah, surrounded by all her family (except her grown-up step daughter, Isabel, who had been sent on a visit to an aunt in Sydney to be "out of the way") waiting to greet her welcome guest; and Rachel, jumping down from the buggy, and flinging herself into those faithful arms, felt that she had been a wandering prodigal in strange countries for half a dozen years, and was on the threshold of home again. "But, oh," she said to herself, when having seen little Alfy tucked up in his cot, and having, maidless, with her own hands, laid away her clothes in drawers and wardrobes, she began to dress for dinner, "_what_ could have made Lucilla imagine that waiting for him for twenty-four hours would _rest_ me?" The long hours passed, however, as the longest hours do, and the evening of Wednesday drew on with a flaming crimson sunset; and Rachel listened for the sound of buggy wheels on distant bush tracks, and was deafened by the noise of her own loud-beating heart. "They are coming," whispered Lucilla, creeping with the stealth of a conspirator into her cool, dim drawing-room, where the young widow stood, bright-eyed and pale, in her black gown, steadying herself with a hand on the piano. "Shall I send him in to you by himself, dear, or would he think that was bad taste--a too open and vulgar way of recognising the state of affairs?" "Oh, no, he would think not it vulgar," replied Rachel, smiling slightly through her air of solemn and rapt abstraction. "You must send him by himself, Lucilla, please--this once." The buggy came into the garden and passed the window. Lucilla, outside on the verandah, welcomed her guest with effusive inquiries after Mrs. Digby's health and welfare, and that of all the little Digbys' respectively; Mr. Thornley gave loud directions to the servants about the portmanteau that was to be carried to the green gable room. And then the buggy went to the stable-yard; there was a few minutes' silence; and the door of the drawing-room opened quietly, and Roden Dalrymple came in. He had changed a little in the four years since she had seen him last; his ruddy moustache was a little more grizzled, and the lines in his sun-tanned forehead were stronger and deeper.