So they had been friends, her first husband and
her second! Rachel stooped and looked hard at the enlargement, and there
sure enough was the photographer's imprint. Yes, they had been friends
in Australia, that country which John Buchanan Steel elaborately and
repeatedly pretended never to have visited in all his travels!
Rachel could have smiled as she drew herself up with this point settled
in her mind for ever; why, the room reeked of Australia! These cases had
never been properly unpacked, they were overflowing with memorials of
the life which she herself knew so well. Here a sheaf of boomerangs were
peeping out; there was an old gray wide-awake, with a blue-silk fly-veil
coiled above the brim; that was an Australian saddle; and those glass
cases contained samples of merino wool. So it was in Australia as a
squatter that Steel had made his fortune! But why suppress a fact so
free from all discredit? These were just the relics of a bush life which
a departing colonist might care to bring home with him to the old
country. Then why cast them into a secret lumber-room whose very
existence was unknown to the old Australian's Australian wife?
Rachel felt her brain reeling; and yet she was thankful for the light
which had been vouchsafed to her at last.
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