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286 you. In a month's time, I shall have left Australia. Blake and I have agreed to dissolve partnership and to sell Baròlin."

"I am glad of that," she said.

He laughed in a strange, wild way. They were at the entrance to the cleft through which wound the Point Row gulley, the scene of their picnic in the autumn. The buggies crawled along a rough cedar-cutter's track for a little way, and then at Lady Garfit's request the ladies got out and a general shifting of baggage and dismounting and remounting took place, Lady Garfit being hoisted on the safest of the Tunimba steeds and placed under the care of the steadiest of the Tunimba stockmen, who led the lady and the horse along the bridle path to the lichen-covered boulders whence it was necessary to proceed on foot. Lady Waveryng uttered cries of delight. The place was in all the beauty of spring blossom. The rock-lilies were in flower, and stuck out all over the precipice in tufts like plumes of cream coloured feathers. Orchids, with white and purple tassels hung down from the crevices, the shrubs were nearly all in bloom, and so was the wild begonia, and the ferns were in their glory of new pale green fronds.

They picnicked on the higher plateau. It was a very sumptuous luncheon, got up in Mrs. Jem Hallett's best fashion. She was determined that the luncheon and the expedition should be immortalized in Lady Waveryng's book. A clever young "new-chum" from one of the Luya stations who had joined the party, and who had brought a Kodak, took photographs, grouping the stockmen and black boys and guests under Lady Waveryng's direction. He insisted on including Elsie in each group; Lady Waveryng made a greater point of the black boys. She raved about the picturesqueness of Pompo and Jack Nutty. Elsie submitted willingly to be posed. She did not want to climb higher, as Frank Hallett proposed. She had too vivid a remembrance of the ramble with Blake. And she thought of that saying of hers on which he had sadly commented.