“At the Packhorse on the York Road.  I came that way round for the sake of the surface and the exercise.”

“And did you see the check?”

“No, I only stopped for a moment, to find out what the excitement was about; but the fellow I can see now.  You never set eyes on such a pirate—­gloriously drunk and bearded to the belt.  I didn’t stop, because he was lacing into everybody with a cushion, and the local loafers seemed to like it.”

“What a joke!” cried Sybil Venables.

“There is no accounting for taste,” remarked her sapient sister.

“And he was belaboring them with a cushion, did you say?” added Rachel, with the slightest emphasis upon the noun.

“Well, it looked like one to me,” replied Langholm, “but, on second thoughts, it was more like a bolster in shape; and now I know what it was!  It has just dawned on me.  It looked like a bolster done up in a blanket; but it was the swag that the tramps carry in Australia, with all their earthly goods rolled up in their bedding; and the fellow was an Australian swagsman, that’s what he was!”

“Swagman,” corrected Rachel, instinctively.  “And pray what color was the blanket?” she made haste to add.

“Faded blue.”

And, again from sheer force of instinct, Rachel gave a nod.

“Were you ever out there, Mrs. Steel?” inquired Langholm, carelessly.  “I never was, but the sort of thing has been done to death in books, and I only wonder I didn’t recognize it at once.  Well, it was the last type one thought to meet with in broad daylight on an English country road!”

Had Langholm realized that he had put a question which he had no business to put?  Had he convicted himself of a direct though unpremeditated attempt to probe the mystery of his hostess’s antecedents, and were his subsequent observations designed to unsay that question in effect?  If so, there was no such delicacy in the elder Miss Venables, who became quite animated at the sudden change in Rachel’s face, and at her own perception of the cause.

“Have you been to Australia, Mrs. Steel?” repeated Vera, looking Rachel full in the eyes; and she added slyly, “I believe you have!”

There was a moment’s pause, and then a crisp step rang upon the marble, as Mr. Steel emerged from his study.

“Australia, my dear Miss Venables,” said he, “is the one country that neither my wife nor I have ever visited in our lives, and the last one that either of us has the least curiosity to see.”

And he took his seat among them with a smile.

CHAPTER XIII

THE AUSTRALIAN ROOM

It was that discomfort to man, that cruelty to beast, that outrage by unnatural Nature upon all her children—­a bitter summer’s day.  The wind was in the east; great swollen clouds wallowed across the sky, now without a drop, now breaking into capricious showers of stinging rain; and a very occasional burst of sunlight served only to emphasize the evil by reminding one of the season it really was, or should have been, even if it did not entice one to the wetting which was the sure reward of a walk abroad.  The Delverton air was strong and bracing enough, but the patron wind of the district bit to the bone through garments never intended for winter wear.