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244 "Will you tell me something?" he said humbly. "I should like to know, if I may, when you are to become Mrs. Frank Hallett?"

"Why do you wish to know?" she asked, falteringly.

"Why? Oh, for several foolish reasons. One is that I should rather like to see the last of Elsie Valliant, and when she is dead and buried and done for, it will be time for me to 'up stick and yan,' as the blacks say. I am thinking of shifting my hurdles. Don't I get Australian in my way of putting things?"

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Only that I am tired of Australia and of Australian life. I have the demon of restlessness on me again. I am not sure that I shall not go back to Ireland, and to quote Lord Waveryng, 'face the music.'"

"But why Lord Waveryng?"

"Something he told me set me thinking. The Coola curse is on me; the curse which dooms one Blake in a generation. I am the doomed Blake of this generation. And just lately the feeling has haunted me. I have the most curious sense of coming calamity; though I don't know that it is curious," he added thoughtfully.

"Oh, Mr. Blake, I can't bear to hear you talk so recklessly. And there's no reason for it. It is some strange fancy that you have in your mind. Why should you be doomed?—you who have been so successful, who have everything in the world to make you happy?"

"Have I? Everything in the world to make me happy! There is one thing wanting for that, Miss Valliant, and it was offered me by fate on a certain moonlight night, not very long since, and I took it in my arms, and I let it go again"

"What do you mean?" she asked again, growing very pale.

"Nothing that there is any use in saying. I must not see too much of you, or I may be doing something for which I should be sorry. A man can be brave and cool enough, and hard enough in a crisis, you know, Miss Valliant. It is