He was un-English in a
hundred superficial ways--in none that cut deep. With all his essential
cynicism, there was the breadth and tolerance of a travelled man.
Cosmopolitan on the other hand, he could not be called; he had proved
himself too poor a linguist in every country that they had visited. It
was only now, in their home life, that Rachel received hints of the
truth, and it filled her with vague alarms, for that seemed to her to be
the last thing he need have kept to himself.
One day she saw him ride a fractious horse, not because he was fond of
riding, but because nobody in the stables could cope with this animal.
Steel tamed it in ten minutes. But a groom remarked upon the shortness
of his stirrups, in Rachel's hearing, and on the word a flash of memory
lit up her brain. All at once she remembered the incident of the
gum-leaves, soon after their arrival; he had told Morna what they were,
yet to his wife he had pretended not to know. If he also was an
Australian, why on earth should that fact, of all facts, be concealed
from her? Nor had it merely been concealed; it was a point upon which
Rachel had been deliberately misled, and the only one she could recall.
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