A BLACK SHEEP.

"

W WHO is Mr. Roden Dalrymple?" asked Rachel presently. Mr. Thornley was escorting her back to her aunt, and the person in question was riding across the ground—slowly, as he had come—in search of one of the grooms of his party, to whom he might deliver his horse to be stabled in the township until the return from Adelonga.

"Who is he?" repeated Mr. Thornley. "He is Mrs. Digby's brother. Nice little woman, Mrs. Digby. You will like her I know. I am very glad she has come."

"But what is he?" persisted Rachel, so absorbed in watching the tall rider swinging along at that stately, easy pace, with his long stirrups and his dangling rein, that she nearly tumbled over a couple of children who crossed her path. "Is he a Queensland squatter?"

"That is what he thinks of being," laughed Mr. Thornley, with an amused, half-mocking laugh. "He has taken up a big run with Jim Gordon, and they are going to live there and manage for themselves. A nice mess they'll make of it, I expect."

"Why?" inquired Rachel.

"Why? They know no more about it than you do. How should they? Oh, by the bye, yes; I suppose Dalrymple has dabbled in cattle a little—in that South American venture of his. But that experience won't benefit him much. He lost every penny he put into that business."

"Has he lived in South America?" asked Rachel.

"He has lived all over the world, I think. He's a rolling stone, my dear, that's what he is—with the proverbial consequences."

"Is he poor, then?"

"Poor as a church mouse. That is to say, he has got a bit of an estate somewhere in Scotland or Ireland—I really forget which—an old ruin of a house mortgaged to the chimney-pots, and a few starved farms, that bring him in a few odd hundreds now and again. He tries all sorts of queer schemes for mending his fortunes, but they never come to anything."

"Perhaps he is one of the unlucky ones—like my poor father," suggested Rachel.

"I don't know. I'm afraid he's a ne'er-do-weel. Judging from his past history—Jim Gordon knows all about him—he has no worse enemy than himself."

"What is his history?" Rachel asked the question with a vague sense of resentment against her prosperous host, who had probably never known misfortunes.

"Well, he was an only son, and I suppose spoilt—to begin with. He was brought up for the army—simply, as far as I can make out, from force of habit, because his father and no end of grandfathers had been soldiers before him—instead of being taught how to manage and improve that ramshackle old property of his.

"He was in a crack cavalry regiment; one of the worst of them—I mean for folly and extravagance; and he went no end of a pace, as if he had the Bank of England at his back, and got all his affairs into a mess; and then he got gambling at Newmarket. The story goes that he played a brother-officer for some woman that they were both in love with; and he staked everything he had in the world that he could lay his hands on, except that old land and house, which the law kept for his children. Fortunately, he is not married, nor ever likely to be."

"And he lost her?" said Rachel, in an awed whisper, with something very like tears in her eyes.

"Her? He lost more than ever she was worth, I'll be bound. He lost to that extent that he had to sell his commission to pay. The young fool! he must have been a raving lunatic."

"And what did he do then?" asked Rachel, taking out her handkerchief and blowing her nose ostentatiously.

"No one quite knows what he did for the first few years after he sold out. He lived in Paris most of his time, and knocked about on the continent, at Baden and those places—up to no good, you may be sure. Then he went to the Cape, hunting and amusing himself; and then to California, gold-digging; and then all about South America, trying farming or cattle-raising, or something of that sort; and then Digby went home and married his sister, and she persuaded him to come here."

"Has he been here long?"

"A year or two. He has lived with them most of the time—learning colonial experience of Digby, I suppose. She is awfully fond of him, that little woman. And Digby never says a word against him—for her sake, I suppose."

"Why should he say anything against him?" asked Rachel rather warmly. "He is doing nothing wrong now, is he?"

"Oh, no. He is older and wiser now, I daresay. Still—still—" and Mr. Thornley looked askance at the pretty young creature who was about to make this reprobate's acquaintance under his roof, and bethought him that he ought to secure her against temptation and danger—"still there's no doubt that he is rather a bad lot—what you would call a black sheep, you know, my dear—not the sort of man that it is desirable to be very intimate with."

Rachel blushed one of her ready blushes, and with such suddenness and vigour that Mr. Thornley feared he had accidentally made equivocal suggestions.

"I don't mean that he is not a gentleman—a thoroughly honourable gentleman," he explained hastily. "I don't know the rights of that Newmarket business, but in everything else, as far as I am aware, his moral character is as good as mine is; otherwise I should not ask him to Adelonga. I am only speaking of him as a man who has lived a sort of loose, extravagant, Bohemian kind of life, you know."

"I know," assented Rachel absently. Already his prudent tactics were having their natural effect. She was ready to champion the cause of this apparently friendless, as well as unfortunate man; in whom, had he been recommended to her favour, she might—I do not say she would, but she might—have felt only an ordinary unemotional interest; and she did not want to hear any more to his disparagement.

"Is that their buggy?" she asked, nodding in the direction of a covered waggonette which was now drawn up alongside the break—in which three ladies sat with Mrs. Hardy, while three gentlemen leaned in and talked to them.

"Yes," he replied, "and that is Mrs. Digby—that little woman in a brown hat. The one next her is Mrs. Hale, a neighbour of theirs—cousin of Digby's. The girl is Miss Hale. That's Digby with the big light beard. The little man is Hale. The man with a brown beard is Lessel—engaged to Miss Hale."

"Are they all coming to Adelonga?"

"They are. And I am wondering how we are going to stow them all. We can pack ten inside, with a little squeezing, but there is Dalrymple extra."

"I'll sit in the boot with the children."

"And all the portmanteaus? Indeed you won't. I must take two on the box. How do you do, Mrs. Digby? How do, Mrs. Hale? How do, Miss Hale? I am delighted to see you all."

Here ensued many complicated greetings, and protracted inquiries and explanations as to everybody's health and welfare; and then Rachel found herself absorbed in the group, and the business of making all these new people's acquaintance. She was a shy, but an eminently adaptable, little person, ready to melt like snow before a smiling face and a kindly manner; and as she naturally received a great deal of attention, she was soon at her ease amongst them.

Mrs. Digby was a graceful and distinguished-looking woman, fair and pale, with a soft voice and refined and gentle manners, and her she admired excessively, with the reverent enthusiasm of eighteen for a sister beauty of eight-and-twenty.

Mrs. Hale was less attractive. She was rather pompous and imperious, rather noisy and bustling, anxious to lead the conversation, and generally to dominate the company; and withal she had no pretensions to good looks, except in respect of her very handsome costume, and not a great deal to good breeding; she was large and strong; she was rich and prosperous; she had a small, meek husband. Such as she was, she monopolised the largest share of Mrs. Hardy's attention.

Miss Hale was a comfortable, round-faced, wholesome-looking girl, pleasant to talk to, but not intellectually, or indeed in any way remarkable. She devoted herself to Rachel ardently, with the air of taking friendly relations as a matter of course, under the interesting circumstances; glancing archly at Rachel's diamond ring, and displaying the less magnificent symbol of her own betrothal; and otherwise, whenever opportunity offered, suggesting the sentimental situation with more or less directness.

Rachel, however, did not find her engagement a matter of absorbing interest; she preferred to talk to Mrs. Digby about the little Digbys left at home, or to muse in silent intervals—which, to be sure, came few and far between—of that sad and tragic story of which a glimpse had just been given her.

The men of the waggonette party were pleasant, ordinary men; all of them Australians born, and two of them—Mr. Digby and Mr. Lessel—fine, handsome specimens of our promising colonial race. They were assiduous in their attentions to the youngest and prettiest lady of the company, who, as a matter of course, liked their attentions; but she could not help feeling a certain restless desire for the return of Mr. Roden Dalrymple, whose absence seemed to make the circle strangely incomplete.

He was a long time coming back. They went down to witness the second race; they wandered for half-an-hour amongst the booths and merry-go-rounds to amuse themselves with any rustic fun that was going on; they congregated under the shelter of the judge's box—Mrs. Digby and Miss Hale standing in it on this occasion—to see yet another "event" disposed of; and then the butler and the nursemaid with profuse amateur assistance began to spread the tablecloth for lunch on a bit of grassy level, pleasantly shadowed in the now brilliant noontide by the big body of the break.

All the portmanteaus had been placed in the boot of this capacious vehicle, and the Digbys' waggonette and horses had been sent to the hotel to await their return from Adelonga; and still there was no sign of Mr. Dalrymple.

"Where can the fellow be?" inquired Mr. Digby of the general public, looking up for a moment from his interesting occupation of brewing "cup," in which Rachel was helping him. "He is the most unsociable brute I ever came across—always loafing away by himself. It isn't safe to take your eye off him for a moment."

"How well Queensland will suit him!" laughed Mrs. Hale.

"No doubt he rode down to the township to give his own orders about Lucifer," said his sister, lifting her gentle face. "You know he never cares to trust him to a groom."

"He could have done that and been back again an hour ago," rejoined her husband. "However, pray don't wait for him when lunch is ready, Mrs. Hardy; he will turn up some time."

Rachel had an indignant opinion, to which she longed to give expression, that they would all be most grossly rude if they did anything of the sort. She resented this too ready inclination to slight a man who in her estimation was dignified by his heroic experiences so much above them all; and as far as in her lay she did what she could to counteract it.

She took a napkin and polished all the wine-bottles, and peeled the foil from all the champagne corks; she mixed and tossed the salad in a slow and cautious manner; she garnished the numerous meats with unnecessary elaboration; she would not allow luncheon to be ready, in short, until either one o'clock or the missing guest arrived.

She was standing on the step of the break, helping to hand down rugs and cushions for the ladies to sit upon—which was not her business, as her aunt's disapproving eye suggested—when at last she discerned him far away on the outskirts of the crowd.

"It wants ten minutes to one, Mr. Thornley, and I see Mr. Dalrymple coming," she called out in her fresh, clear voice.

"Where do you see him?" asked Mr. Digby, who was standing in the break, hugging an armful of opossum rugs. "I don't see him."

She pointed silently, and for some minutes Mr. Digby looked in vain for his brother-in-law, knitting his brows, and shading his eyes from the sunlight. At last he saw him.

"All that way off!" he exclaimed. "You must have very good sight, Miss Fetherstonhaugh, to recognise him at such a distance."

"He is easy to recognise," said Rachel, simply.