Page:Hornung - Irralies Bushranger.djvu/75

 "Offensively good!" said Irralie, and changed the subject with characteristic abruptness.

In fact, she had remembered Fullarton's wound, and the memory expressed itself in that solicitude for him which was to be her outward way of atoning for the folly that was still heinous in her eyes. She had wronged him before, she must make up for it now. So seriously she continued to put it to herself; and yet her friends did not know her as a serious person, but rather for a hearty, hard-riding, impudent, charming, independent child of the bush.

Was she changing? Had she already changed? Deliberate introspection would have come amiss to her the week, nay, the very day before; hitherto she had coupled it with insomnia (to which hers had been always due) as an occasional disorder at the worst. Now—as it were in a moment—it was her perpetual pitfall—a besetting sin. This very reflection she made alone in the moonlight later in the evening. And why