"Yes," he said, "you are right, there was; I've had a telegram from home. I've been turning it over in my mind as I came along." "That's rather odd, because this morning I had quite a packet of English letters. Just look at them. From whom is your telegram?" "From Carr and Phillips, the Aversham lawyers. George is dead." "Your brother--dead! Sydney! When did he die?" "The telegram says--here it is--'Your brother, Sir George Beaton, died suddenly this morning. Letter follows.' That's all, except their name; it's rather a facer. I haven't seen George for----" He paused, as if searching in his mind for an exact date. "It's more than seven years since we left England." "Yes, nearly eight years. You remember, we were talking about it only the other day. More than once lately I've had a feeling that I should like to see him again; and now he's gone. He wasn't exactly the most affectionate of brothers, though I dare say he would have said the same of me; but he was all I had; the last Beaton of them all." "What will become of Adisham?" "It's mine, since he never married; that's another facer; the old house is mine, and it will be our Sydney's when I'm gone. The whole property, such as it is, goes to the next male heir; under the old entail women don't count. No feminine thing has ever had Adisham, or ever will." "It seems as if this were going to be a day of coincidences, one of those days on which if it rains it pours. You've had news--and such news, and I've had letters--such letters, from home. There's one from Nuthurst." "From your uncle?" "Yes, from uncle. It's the sweetest letter. I can see him sitting down to write it, at his big table in the justice room, with his eyes, as it were, across the sea, trying with all his might not to put a word on paper which could hurt." "He wants you to go home?" "He doesn't say so. In every word he has written I can read what is in his mind; he feels that there are reasons which might make it difficult for me to go, and he doesn't want to hurt me by asking me to do what I mightn't be able to; he thinks it might hurt me to have to refuse. But, Sydney, all through his letter, although he doesn't know it, he's telling me that he is a very old man, and he's crying out for me to come--before he goes." "Does he speak of me?" "Does he! He speaks more of you than of me, and he's full of the children. His body is in England, but his spirit is with us in New South Wales. If he weren't such an old man, and so little of a traveller, I'm sure he would come to us; he would have come long ago." "I wonder what it would feel like to go back to England on a visit?" "I wonder? I hardly dare to." "Vi! Is it so bad with you as that?" "Oh, Sydney, if you only knew how I'd love to go--with you and with the children. Why, the children never have seen England." "That's certainly a fact." He was regarding her with something quizzical in his eyes.