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Rh "I don't think he will," said Lord Waveryng. "He believes in his first wife's ghost. It's a kind of mania. You Blakes are all a little queer, you know."

"Yes, I know very well," answered Morres Blake, bitterly. "It's in the blood. That queerness is responsible for a good deal."

Lord Waverying looked at him keenly. "You are sane enough," he said.

"Am I!" cried Blake, passionately. "I'm mad. I tell you—mad—mad."

"You were mad when you threw your chances away, and went in for that Fenian business; but it was the aberration of youth. They tell me that you make a good colonial politician. Curious, isn't it, when one comes to think of it, that you should be Colonial Secretary of Leichardt's Land."

Blake laughed strangely. Again there was silence.

The men walked on, puffing their cigars. They had reached the place where the street divided into two, one leading to the ferry, the other past the Houses of Parliament to the great gates of Government House. Here they paused.

"Lord Waveryng," Blake said impulsively, "I trust you."

"I never betrayed confidence in my life," said the other—"at least I hope not, willingly. If you wish to be thought dead, why as far as I am concerned you are dead. But I think you make a mistake in not facing the music."

They shook hands and parted. But Blake did not go straight to Fermoy's.

Careless of what might be thought of him, he walked on through the paddock in which Riverside Cottage stood. He looked wistfully at the little closed up house and at the verandah in which was Elsie's chair, and where her work-basket still lay on the rough table. He was only driven away by the sight of Peter the Kanaka up betimes to gather rosellas for the shop on the Point, which bought such garden stuff as the widow had to dispose of. He slipped down among the lantaerna shrubs that grew close to the garden