And her nature was
large enough to refrain from the momentary gratification of a bitter
repartee. But he was too clever for her; that she did feel, whatever
else he might be; and her only chance was to return to the plain
questions with which she had started, demanding answers as plain. Rachel
led up to them, however, with one or two of which she already knew the
answer, thus preparing for her spring in quite the Old Bailey manner,
which she had mastered subconsciously at her trial, and which for once
was to profit a prisoner at the bar.
"Yet you don't any longer deny that you have been to Australia?"
"It is useless. I lived there for years."
"And you admit that you knew Alexander quite well out there?"
"Most intimately, in the Riverina, some fifteen or twenty years ago; he
was on my station as almost everything a gentleman could be, up to
overseer; and by that time he was half a son to me, and half a younger
brother."
"But no relation, as a matter of fact?"
"None whatever, but my very familiar friend, as I have already told
you."
"Then why in the world," Rachel almost thundered, "could you not tell me
so in the beginning?"
"That is a question I have already answered.
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