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Rh when the crisis is over that he gets unnerved." He gave an odd laugh, that seemed to her intensely sad. "This is wild talk for a sober, staid Colonial Secretary of Leichardt's Land. What would Mr. Torbolton say if he could hear me? But I have got the Celtic temperament, and I can't help my queer forebodings and superstitions and mad impulses, and generally melodramatic way of looking at things, and you know I said to you once a man must follow his star"

"I don't want to interrupt you," put in Lord Horace. "But if you are going to ride over with me this evening, Elsie, we ought to be seeing about the horses. What sized swag shall you have?"

"I am not coming to-night," said Elsie, rousing herself as if from a dream. "Frank will bring me over to-morrow."

"Oh, Elsie, dear," cried Mrs. Allanby, reproachfully. "And I had set my heart on that moonlight ride! Think how beautiful Mount Luya would look from the gorges! It would be so romantic."

"Has not a moonlight ride through the gorges any attraction for you?" said Blake, in a low voice.

"Yes," she answered, in as low a voice as his.

"Then why don't you come?"

She did not answer.

"Are you afraid of me?"

"No," she answered.

"You will have your future husband to take care of you," he said bitterly. "I promise not to annoy you with wild talk."

"It does not annoy me, it only makes me"

"What—contemptuous of my weakness?"

"No, no—Mr. Blake, you remember, we agreed to let the past be past. We agreed to be friends. Will you let me be your friend, your sister, and tell me, as you would tell your sister, what it is that is troubling you?"

"I will tell you some time," he said; "but not now, and not as I would tell my sister. I will tell you"

He paused. His eyes fixed themselves on her with doubt and tenderness, in a way that thrilled Elsie.