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Rh some people the two natures are both so strong that life is always a battle. It's the Celt in me that gives me no peace."

"I don't understand," she said again.

He laughed. "No, I don't suppose you do. For your own sake I hope not. And yet sometimes I fancy that you've got a little bit of the same nature in you, and that, to a very faint extent, we are companions in misfortune."

"Misfortune!"

"Isn't it a misfortune to have the rebel taint? You couldn't bind yourself down to the sort of life which would content that very estimable young lady Miss Grarfit."

"No."

"Nor could I lead the calm decorous existence of—shall I say Mr. Frank Hallett? an existence made up of going out on the run, managing a model station, observing all the social, domestic, and religious obligations, amassing an honourable fortune by strict attention to business and by prudent investment, loving one woman and cleaving to her. No, I do the Celt injustice there. His morals are his strongest point—my grandmother was French. Miss Valliant, have I offended you?"

"Yes." Elsie had turned to him bright dilated eyes. "I will not have you speak in that sneering way of Frank Hallett."

"Forgive me, I did not mean to sneer. And I ought to have remembered what I was told last night."

"What was that?"

"That he is to be your husband."

Elsie rode on with flaming cheeks, distancing the Outlaw by a few paces. They were a long way in advance of the others. In the distance was to be seen a cluster of buildings standing back against a hill, which was covered with dense scrub. A little to the right rose Mount Luya, a majestic object, with its encircling precipiced battlement of grey rock, making it look like some Titanic fortress. Its strange rents and fissures and the black bunya scrub clothing its lower slopes made it seem still more grim and gloomy.