Page:Coo-ee - tales of Australian life by Australian ladies.djvu/139

Rh signs and symptoms, I felt quite a vicious sort of satisfaction, and almost felt as if she would do a good work in taking the young man in hand. She certainly seemed capable of being a liberal education to him or to any other man.

THE next week we spent playing tennis at each other's houses, and drinking tea, and having little women's picnics—all the men but Clive being about their various businesses.

We amused ourselves quite well, however. Miss Ariell was a constant contradiction.

By this time I knew all that was to be known of her life, down to the minutest particular. I had heard the tragedy from the first scene to the last. It was a small domestic one, founded on a wicked captain, and built up of a wonderful assortment of shattered hopes and blighted hearts and rapid consumption,—the pretty variety with pink spots and preternatural brilliancy of eye, which the young woman and Clive stood by with heroic tenderness until the end.

It was quite a pleasure to think of the round, soft creature, with those dimples, and a becoming shade of sadness in those baby eyes, floating round in a