Lileth won the battle with her uncle, “hands down,” and her brother became a “rouse about” (apprentice on a run) at Murdaro station.
That her uncle was indebted to a large amount to the late Dr. Dyesart she knew well; she believed the two men, also, to be partners in the run. But this was one of the few things she found herself unable to pry fully into. Miss Mundella had taken charge of the letter from the dead explorer, which faithful Billy had curiously brought to the very station his late master had been so much interested in. She had, moreover, carefully opened the packet which contained the message from the dead; not from idle curiosity, but with the idea that it probably contained something that would assist her in her plans. The words of the letter she saw at once clearly pointed to three things: firstly, a reparation or gift to be made to some one through the nephew; secondly, a command to this nephew to visit the grave of the writer; thirdly, a suspicion of the honesty of squatters,—possibly a concealed distrust of her uncle Wilson Giles himself.
Miss Mundella’s first thoughts were to destroy the letter, but upon consideration she thought she saw in it a means of obtaining further command over her uncle, and so sent it on its road to New Zealand.
She must act, and act quickly, for her brother had informed her from Sydney of young Angland’s departure for the north; but before she could move in the matter she must know more of the relations that had existed between Dyesart and her uncle.
The young lady is sitting wrapped in these cogitations, oblivious of the snake-hunting cats and meteoric lizards, when we first see her, rocking herself gently under the cool and shady verandah. Presently a light step is heard in the large room whose French windows open upon Miss Mundella’s leafy retreat, and the little figure of an aboriginal girl appears, her dark limbs and cream-coloured gown making her resemble one of those composite statues of bronze and marble.
It is Dina, Miss Lileth’s special handmaiden. Caught as a child, she is the sole surviving member of a once great _Otero_, or tribal-family, which was annihilated by the Black Police some eight years before, at a “rounding-up” of the natives in the neighbourhood.