Part 29 (2/2)

”I shall go to Taloona and see about it.”

”It will not a.s.sist you if you do. In the first place, you will not be able to see her, and, in the second, even if you did see her, you would only learn that the matter has been placed in my hands.”

”Then, if it is in your hands, deal with it as a reasonable business man. While Mrs. Eustace remains at Taloona she will not require the furniture; it will be at least a couple of weeks before we can have any sent up to serve us. How much does Mrs. Eustace want for the hire of what is in the house at present?”

”Twenty pounds a week,” Gale replied, without moving a muscle, even when Wallace flared up at the proposal.

”Utterly preposterous,” he cried. ”Ten s.h.i.+llings a week was what was allowed her. That amount is ample.”

”You are the buyer, not the seller, Mr. Wallace. You pay twenty pounds a week, or the furniture goes. Even at that sum I consider that Mrs.

Eustace is placing the Bank under a distinct obligation to her.”

There was no escape; reluctantly Wallace admitted it, and agreed to the terms, humiliating though they were. But it was still more humiliating for him to learn the following day that Mrs. Eustace declined to accept anything whatever, but allowed the Bank to use the furniture and retain the services of Bessie until other arrangements could be made.

”What is the game she is playing?” he said to Harding. ”Is it all part of some elaborate scheme between herself and her husband, or is she really sincere?”

The letter sewn into the lining of his coat seemed to burn itself into Harding's back. Was it all part of an elaborate scheme, part of the ”everything” she had to do ”as arranged”? If he could only be sure!

”I don't know what to make of it,” he answered. ”I don't know.” But while they were speculating at the bank as to the sincerity or insincerity of Mrs. Eustace, she was driving her own troubles from her mind by the constant and unremitting care of a taciturn and exacting patient.

For the first two or three days after the bullet was extracted from his leg, Dudgeon was in a high state of fever. In his semi-delirium he babbled incessantly of Kitty, grew dangerously excited whenever the doctor came near him, and would only be pacified by the presence of Mrs.

Eustace. In his lucid intervals he told her over and over again the story of his betrayal; when his mind wandered, he regarded her as the Kitty he had known before the shattering of his life's romance. It was difficult for her to decide which experience was the more trying.

Later, when the fever left him, he was as a child in her hands, listening while she read or talked to him, taking anything she brought him without demur, and only showing signs of impatience when she left the hut for a while.

Consequently, she was unable to give any attention to Durham, and as the days slipped by the doctor began to chafe, for there were patients scattered through the bush whom he was anxious to visit, but he could not go away and leave both men to Mrs. Eustace to nurse.

It was at this juncture that Mrs. Burke put her threat into execution, and drove over to Taloona in a big old-fas.h.i.+oned waggonette with Patsy perched on the box and a store of blankets inside.

”I've come to do my share of the work,” she told the doctor. ”They stopped me from coming before--I was turned back by a trooper a mile from the house. But I'm tired of waiting for word how the poor fellows are, and have just come to take one of them away with me.”

She had driven right up to the huts, and the sound of her voice penetrated both. Old Dudgeon, striving to sit up, stared at Mrs. Eustace with gleaming eyes.

”That devil,” he muttered. ”It's her voice. I'd know it in a million.

Keep her away! Don't let her come near me, or I'll----”

”Hush, you must not get excited,” Mrs. Eustace said, as she gently pushed him back. ”No one is coming in here. I'll see to that. I'll shut the door and bolt them out.”

In the other hut the patient's eyes also gleamed, but with a different light. The forced inaction, the solitude, the wearying monotony of lying still, to one accustomed to a life full of incident and action, was more than trying; but when, as was the case with Durham, there was urgent and engrossing work to be done, the compulsory delay aggravated the evils of the injury he had sustained.

Through the long hours he chafed against the helplessness which prevented him from following up the clue he had already obtained, but still more did he chafe against his inability to renew his acquaintance with the woman who had fascinated him.

He was anxious to make headway in her estimation so that he would have some understanding, however slight, with her when the recovery of her papers and the winning of the reward gave him the opportunity of offering her marriage. His impatience bred many fancies in his mind.

Daily he pictured to himself the danger of someone else becoming his rival in her affections.

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