'Oh, then I can give you all the news; I had a letter yesterday. When Mrs. Carnaby wrote, they had spent a fortnight at Melbourne, and were going on to Brisbane. Mr. Carnaby is going to do something in Queensland--something about mines. I'll read you that part.' The letter lay in the book she was holding. Sibyl wrote indefinitely, but Harvey was able to gather that the mining engineer, Dando, had persuaded Carnaby to take an active interest in his projects. Discussion on speculative enterprises did not recommend itself to the present company, and Rolfe could only express a hope that his friend had at last found a pursuit in which he could interest himself. 'But fancy Sibyl at such places!' exclaimed Alma, with amusement. 'How curious I shall be to see her when she comes back! Before she left England, I'm sure she hadn't the least idea in what part of Australia Brisbane was, or Melbourne either. I didn't know myself; had to look at a map. You'll think that a shameful confession, Mr. Rolfe.' 'My own ideas of Australian geography are vague enough.' 'Oh, but haven't you been there?' 'Not to any of the new countries; I don't care about them. A defect, I admit. The future of England is beyond seas. I would have children taught all about the Colonies before bothering them with histories of Greece and Rome. I wish I had gone out there myself as a boy, and grown up a sheep-farmer.' Alma laughed. 'That's one of the things you say just to puzzle people. It contradicts all sorts of things I've heard you say at other times.--Do _you_ think, Mamma, that Mr. Rolfe missed his vocation when he didn't become a sheep-farmer?' Mrs. Frothingham gently shook her head. No trace of nervousness appeared in her today; manipulating the coloured silks, she only now and then put in a quiet word, but followed the talk with interest. 'But I quite thought you had been to Australia,' Alma resumed. 'You see, it's very theoretical, your admiration of the new countries. And I believe you would rather die at once in England than go to live in any such part of the world.' 'Weakness of mind, that's all.' 'Still, you admit it. That's something gained. You always smile at other people's confessions, and keep your own mind mysterious.' 'Mysterious? I always thought one of my faults was over-frankness.' 'That only shows how little we know ourselves.' Harvey was reflecting on the incompleteness of his knowledge of Alma. Intentionally or not, she appeared to him at this moment in a perfectly new light; he could not have pictured her so simple of manner, so direct, so placid. Trouble seemed to have given her a holiday, and at the same time to have released her from self-consciousness. 'But you have never told us,' she went on, 'about your wanderings in France this summer. English people don't go much to that part, do they?'