Gathered In by Catherine Helen Spence — Read

How to let the Wilta household know his cousin's disgraceful birth without making himself odious was Jim's next concern. His father's anger he was prepared to risk, but his father's bitter annoyance was as nothing to him compared with damaging his cousin with Mrs. Ellerton. If Ellerton himself, who hated Kenneth so thoroughly, had been at hand, a word dropped to him would have been sufficient; the news would have been conveyed to Sybil with certainty and dispatch, and with all the vinegar and gall possible mixed with it. But Ellerton was far away, and slowly recovering; more was the pity, in Jim's opinion. He might drop the disparaging fact to Mr. Gray or to Walter, but they kept him at arms' length; and, besides, they could not be trusted to tell either their sister or their guest such a piece of scandal. He had a notion that such gentlemen do not communicate these things to the ladies of their family. Jim knew no woman except his mother who might be made the go-between, and Mrs. Oswald was too much afraid of her husband's anger to betray his secret.

Opportunity, however, as he thought, favoured him. Kenneth's letter, so carefully written, had arrived at Castle Diarmid when his father was on a fishing excursion in Norway, whither his wife had urged him to go to recruit when the cruel anxiety about Sybil was ended, and she had taken the turn for the better. Mr. McDiarmid was out of the reach of the post, and this letter, sent via Brindisi, might need answering at once, and all Australian letters were too interesting to brook delay; so she looked at the signature, which inspired confidence. For in Sybil's own letters just received she had said that in case she never got back, or anything happened, the dear people at home must remember that she owed the deepest gratitude to the whole of the Gray family, especially to Edith and to Mr. Kenneth Oswald, the nephew of a rich squatter near Wilta, who had shown her the most generous and thoughtful kindness. Young and old at Castle Diarmid got Kenneth Oswald's name by heart, and Norman and Flora speculated on a probable union of Sybil's two friends, and their visiting Castle Diarmid on their wedding tour.