‘Do you know who that is?’ he asked, in
an excited manner, pulling his companion to the window.
Villiers looked through the dusty panes, and saw the
young Frenchman walking away, as handsome and gallant
a man as he had ever seen, followed by the slouching
figure of his friend.
‘Vandeloup,’ he said, turning to Slivers,
who was trembling with excitement.
‘No, you fool,’ retorted the other, triumphantly.
That is “Mr Right".’
MADAME MIDAS AT HOME
Madame Midas was standing on the verandah of her cottage,
staring far away into the distance, where she could
see the tall chimney and huge mound of white earth
which marked the whereabouts of the Pactolus claim.
She was a tall voluptuous-looking woman of what is
called a Junoesque type—decidedly plump,
with firm white hands and well-formed feet. Her
face was of a whitish tint, more like marble than
flesh, and appeared as if modelled from the antique—with
the straight Greek nose, high and smooth forehead,
and full red mouth, with firmly-closed lips.
She had dark and piercing eyes, with heavy arched
eyebrows above them, and her hair, of a bluish-black
hue, was drawn smoothly over the forehead, and coiled
in thick wreaths at the top of her small, finely-formed
head. Altogether a striking-looking woman, but
with an absence of animation about her face, which
had a calm, serene expression, effectually hiding
any thoughts that might be passing in her mind, and
which resembled nothing so much in its inscrutable
look as the motionless calm which the old Egyptians
gave to their sphinxes. She was dressed for coolness
in a loose white dress, tied round her waist with
a crimson scarf of Indian silk; and her beautifully
modelled arms, bare to the elbow, and unadorned by
any trinkets, were folded idly in front of her as she
looked out at the landscape, which was mellowed and
full of warmth under the bright yellow glare of the
setting sun.
The cottage—for it was nothing else—stood
on a slight rise immediately in front of a dark wood
of tall gum-trees, and there was a long row of them
on the right, forming a shelter against the winds,
as if the wood had thrown a protecting arm around the
cottage, and wanted to draw it closer to its warm bosom.
The country was of an undulating character, divided
into fields by long rows of gorse hedges, all golden
with blossoms, which gave out a faint, peach-like
odour. Some of these meadows were yellow with
corn—some a dull red with sorrel, others
left in their natural condition of bright green grass—while
here and there stood up, white and ghost-like, the
stumps of old trees, the last remnants of the forests,
which were slowly retreating before the axe of the
settler. These fields, which had rather a harlequin
aspect with their varied colours, all melted together
in the far distance into an indescribable neutral
tint, and ended in the dark haze of the bush, which
