Two o’clock, ante-meridian, strikes the carriage clock in Glory Giles’s bedroom, which adjoins that of Miss Mundella. And ere the deep music of its coil-bell vibrations have faded in waves of dying sweetness into silence, the charming occupant of the apartment is wide awake.
All is silent in the house, and the golden-haired maiden lies deeply thinking within the cosy sanctum of her mosquito-curtained couch. Glory had heard the last part of the conversation between Claude and Lileth. It had, of course, considerably interested her. But it was not till the young lady had entered into the quiet of her own room, that she had thought of there being any connection between the murderous attack upon her admirer in Sydney and the photograph incident of the previous evening.
Glory remembers the promise of secrecy exacted from her by her cousin Lileth,—whom she looks upon more in the light of a step-mother than a girl-companion only a few years older than herself,—and dreadful thoughts begin to shape themselves.
The merry little girlish brain is not given to much labour in the tiresome direction of induction-drawing. But where female interest is highly excited, there arises into being a more active means of interpretation than that employed by the more stolid brain of the male human when solving similar problems. This power—called by men “jumping at a conclusion”—tells Claude’s inamorata hearer that “her hero” is in danger at the hands of her dark-haired relative, now slumbering in the next room.
Slumbering? No! For there is a light in there; and presently the green-baize door, that opens from one bed-chamber to the other, swings noiselessly backwards, and Miss Mundella appears holding a lighted taper in her hands.
She wears her dark morning dress, and, after addressing Glory softly, to ascertain if her cousin is awake, and receiving no answer, she moves silently out of the apartment and down the passage.
An hour afterwards one of the station “boys” rides off with a letter from the shadow of the quiet buildings.
This is the burly Cape York native called Carlo,—the executioner of “Government House,”—and as he has been enjoined, by Miss Mundella herself, to hurry over his appointed task, he is not likely to tarry on the way.