And Estelle! Estelle! There was the sharpest sting--the bitterest grief--the direst pang of all. Could he ever look again into those lovely, trusting eyes, having undergone what he had done? Could he ask her--angel of purity that she was; the embodiment of the refinement of generations of stainless ancestors; sheltered, as she had been, by the conditions of her birth and education from all knowledge of the evil that there is in the world,--could he ask her to lay her head upon a felon's breast?--to take his hand in life-long pledge of happiness, when at any time, in any land where this long arm of extradition could reach, the hand of justice might seize him? No! Such companionship, such love, could never be his in the future. He had lost them for ever. On the lower level to which he had sunk he must remain. To its privations he must accustom himself; the surroundings he must endure. There was no help for it. If Tessie Lawless chose to share his lot he might not deny her. She knew the whole of his story. She loved him. She had been faithful and true. She deserved any poor recompense, such as the damaged future of his life, that of a nameless man, could offer, if she chose to accept it. For Trevanion of Wychwood was dead, and his early love, with all his high hopes and noble aspirations, lay deep in the grave of his buried honour. * * * * * From the day of Lance Trevanion's arrest at Balooka, no word, by letter or otherwise, had reached Wychwood of the fortunes of its heir. Days, weeks, months succeeded each other in the uneventful round into which country life in England has a tendency to settle when ordinary interests are withdrawn or unduly concentrated. It was pitiable to note the squire's anxiety when the Australian mail was due. For him, as for Estelle, there seemed to be but one man whose fortunes were worth following in the whole world--from whom letters were as the breath of life. And now these tidings from a far land, regular, if brief and sententious, up to this time, were suddenly withheld. With the failing health of the Squire--for he suffered from one of the mysterious class of complaints before which strong men go down like feeble children--passed away much of his fierce obstinacy, his pride and arrogance. He thought of his son as he had last seen him,--haughty, tameless, defiant, with all his faults a true Trevanion,--and now, when he hoped to have seen him once again, grown and developed, though bronzed and possibly roughened by the rude life of a colony, when he had schooled himself to recall rash words and to make the _amende_ as far as his nature would permit, here he was thwarted, bewildered, maddened by this sudden arrest of all knowledge of his fate. 'The boy has had the best of the fight,' he groaned out.