She watched for Lord Horace from the cairn on which she had stood watching for Frank Hallett. Oh, what an immeasurable distance she seemed from that careless girlhood! All along the creek towards Baròlin there was a level tract with the mountains rising on either side, and closing in beyond, and she could see a long way off. She could see that there were two horsemen coming. One was Lord Horace. The other she knew was Blake. The girl's heart bounded with delight and dread. She should see him; she should speak to him; he had come on purpose; he had guessed of what she might be thinking. Oh! how could she ever dare to confess it—that he—her hero could even by the remote association of partnership with Trant be implicated in so sordid and mean a thing as a diamond robbery!
But no. At the bend of the creek, the two men pulled up. They said a few words, of which the murmur was only faintly wafted to Elsie; and then they parted, Lord Horace riding towards the Crossing, Blake turning on in the direction of the Bean-tree. And then a curious thing happened. He stopped dead short and whirled round, and in the bright moonlight Elsie, with quickened sight, could see his face turned towards where she stood on the pinnacle of the cairn. He had seen her in the moonlight, in her white dress, outlined against the dark gum-trees; he wished her to know that he had seen her, and that he was true to his resolution and would not come to disturb her again.
Elsie watched him ride away till the two forms of horse and rider were lost in the shadows and the night. She crept down from the cairn and stood on the top of the bank as Lord Horace shambled up.
"Elsie!" he cried. "What the dickens are you doin' here?"
"I wanted to know—have they done anything? Was that Mr. Blake with you?"
"Yes, he wouldn't come in—said he must get down to Leichardt's Town to work the official wires, I suppose. He
