"What's that you have got?" asked Steel, as they turned back up the
drive, after seeing Morna to her woodland path. Rachel was still
carrying her spray of gum-leaves; he must have noticed it before, but
this was the first sign that he had done so. She said at once what it
was, and why she had pulled it from the tree.
"It took me back to Victoria; and, you know, I was born there."
Steel looked narrowly at his wife, a hard gleam in his inscrutable eyes,
and yet a lurking sympathy too, nor was there anything but the latter in
the tone and tenor of his reply.
"I don't forget," he said, "and I think I can understand; but neither
must you forget that I offered to take you back there. So that's a sprig
of gum-tree, is it?"
Rachel gave him a sudden glance, which for once he missed, being
absorbed in a curious examination of the leaves.
"Did you never see one before?" she asked.
"A gum-tree?" said Steel, without looking up, as he sniffed and
scrutinized. "Never in all my life--to my knowledge!"
CHAPTER XI
ANOTHER NEW FRIEND
The country folk did call upon the Steels, as indeed, they could
scarcely fail to do, having called on him already as a bachelor the year
before.
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