fence, and made his way back by a circuitous, but less public track, along the river bank to Fermoy's. ········· During the days that followed the Club ball, Elsie Valliant's mental and moral condition might have been expressed in the plaint of Mariana, though, to be sure, the outward circumstances of her life were very different from those of the lady of the Moated Grange. Life at Leichardt's Town was at high pressure. Life at Riverside Cottage was at high pressure too. The verandah receptions were more brilliant and more sought after than ever, and gained éclat from the presence of the Waveryngs and an admixture of the Government House set; not certainly in the persons of Sir Theophilus and Lady Stukeley, but in the shape of the aide-de-camp and private secretary, and of the more or less distinguished strangers who frequented Government House at this time. There was always some bustle of coming and going, of flirtation, or of making ready for flirtation. But still Blake came not.
They met often, and yet not so often as would have been the case a month before. It seemed to Elsie that Blake avoided all the informal parties which once, for the sake of a waltz or talk with-her, he had welcomed so eagerly. And at the more ceremonious functions, there was an excuse for the formal nature of their intercourse. Naturally at the public balls and at the Government House at Homes it was not to be supposed that the Colonial Secretary could devote himself exclusively to one pretty girl. Blake paid attention to a few of the Leichardt's Town young ladies, and to Elsie there was in this fact a faint consolation. At any rate she could not feel jealous of Mrs. Torbolton, or of the wife of the Minister for Works, or even of Lady Waveryng, who declared herself charmed with Blake, and made him into a sort of cicerone. But in truth the girl's own being was torn in tatters. Wounded pride, love, the sense of humiliation, and insult, made her days an anguish and her nights a terror. And yet she laughed all the time, and she flirted with everybody and made herself into a very scorn of
