'I haven't seen you since the Governor arrived,' Joan went on. 'Where
have you been all these three weeks?'

'At Alexandra City, close on the desert, where they bored for water and
struck ready-made gas--the whole place now is lighted with it. If you
like, I'll give you material for a first-rate article upon an uncommon
phenomenon of Nature.'

'Thank you. I shall be grateful. Colin'--hesitatingly, 'I did think
you'd have come and looked after an old friend at the big Show in the
Botanical Gardens when the Governor made his State Entry.'

'State Entry! Good Lord! Sir Luke Tallant has got a bit too much red
tape and too many airs about him to suit the Leichardt'stonians.'

'You WERE there, then?'

'Started for Alexandra City that afternoon.'

'But you saw--Colin did you see--the Tallants and--their party?

His face changed: it looked positively angry, and his jaw under the
neatly trimmed, sandy beard, protruded determinedly. But at that moment
a footman came towards them, and Mrs Gildea was handed on to an
imposing butler and ushered through a wide palm-screened doorway into
the large inner hall which had a gallery round it and the big staircase
at one end. Joan saw that the room, formerly stiffly furnished and used
chiefly as a ballroom, had been transmogrified with comfortable lounge
chairs and sofas, beautiful embroideries, screens, a spinet and many
flowers and books into a delightful general sitting-room. It seemed