Gathered In by Catherine Helen Spence — Read

With all their talk, the companions found time to admire the scenery and the appearance of well-being on all sides as they drew near Wilta--well--grassed land, sometimes open, but with occasional belts of timber; here splendid gums, with straight white stems, rising fifty or sixty feet before forking out into well-leaved widespread branches, with the inevitable marks of fire on the side of the prevailing hot winds at their base; and there again a belt of sheoaks, looking diminutive by contrast, with their sombre but graceful pinelike foliage; the never-failing creek, traceable in the distance by the gum-trees which bordered it all along, which flowed from the Wilta Hills beyond the house, bridged over by Mr. Gray, and road made at his own expense for miles through his run; the station buildings on a larger scale than those of Tingalpa, and the avenue planted a dozen of years before George Oswald had thought of such a thing.

As they crossed the creek and drove up the avenue they came to the large commodious house, built on one floor, with a broad verandah on all sides but the south. It was in the midst of well laid out grounds, where both skill and taste were visible, and at the door of a conservatory, in front of the house, stood two young ladies, whose appearance would have done credit to any old English country seat. Edith Gray, the daughter of the house, was the older, the larger, and the more commanding of the two. Brown-eyes and dark-haired, her complexion was of that rich creamy kind, with a warmer glow mantling the cheeks. Her mouth was somewhat large, but singularly gracious in expression, closing firmly when silent, but with a wonderful play both of fun and feeling in it with every change of mood, her head finely set on a throat not slender, but grand, with a figure easy and graceful, though on a large scale, she was a contrast in all ways to the blue--eyed, fairhaired, ethereal girl beside her, who, although considerably younger, was a married woman. What was it that attracted Kenneth so powerfully to them both at first sight? Was it that he had been so shut out from refined female society at Tingalpa that the first sight of such loveliness and grace overpowered him, as they say Orientals are mastered by the sudden lifting of a veil which discloses the whole face and expression?