the time, unbeknown to anybody.  And the tale was already spreading far and wide—­to the Urquharts at Five Creeks, to Mr Thornycroft at Bundaboo, to Mr Goldsworthy and his parishioners, to the editor of the local paper—­so that soon the family friends were arriving, to press Mary’s hand and condole with her—­to show her how she had risen in the world, as a woman in the eyes of all.

“No, no,” she protested, when the affianced husband was too literally taken for granted; “it was not a formal engagement.  It was only”—­ defending herself against the puzzled stare and lifted eyebrow—­“only that we understood each other.  He was coming back, if he had lived.”

The wish was father to the thought.  Good, honest girl as she was, she had persuaded herself to this—­that he would have come back if he had lived, and that then the omitted formalities called for by that graveside kiss would certainly have been observed.  It seems incredible, but rampant sex does stranger things every day of the week.  There is, at any rate, nothing extraordinary in the way she clung to the sweet dignity that a similar belief on the part of others brought to her—­ the poor, plain girl, who had always been “out of it”.

The long-hidden photograph was now put into a costly frame, and set up in her room for anybody to see.  Frances would often sneak in with a visitor, to show the manner of man who would have married Molly; there were even times when Mary herself was the exhibitor.  At other times she might have been found kneeling before it as at a shrine, and weeping her eyes out.  And she put off her colours and ornaments, and wore black, and nobody made any objection.  The hero of romance was given to her unquestioningly, and with him a respect and consideration such as she had never known before.  Lovers talked to her of their love affairs, feeling that she was now one of them.  Her father maundered to her for hours at a stretch of the old Mary Carey, at last secure of sympathy and a perfect listener.  Deb was reserved and silent, but otherwise as devoted as the rest.

And then came the inevitable discovery that Guthrie Carey was not dead, after all.  It was made at Five Creeks, while Frances was on a holiday visit to her friend, Belle Urquhart.  At Redford, nobody thought of reading the shipping columns in the newspaper—­their interest was supposed to be gone for ever; but Jim Urquhart glanced at them daily, looking for the arrival of a friend from overseas.  And one day he saw a ship’s name that was familiar to him, and bracketed with it the name of G. Carey as its commander.  The coincidence was startling.  He pointed it out to a man staying in the house—­a stranger to the Redford family and to the district.

“There was a mate named Carey on this ship a while ago.  He changed into that unfortunate Dovedale that was wrecked, and was lost with her.  Odd that the captain of his old vessel should have the same name—­same initial too.  Our friend was Guthrie—­”