Free A Bride from the Bush by E. W. Hornung Page A

doing in Australia, or anywhere else. All that—particularly when you talk of the woman by her Christian name—sounds very much—why, it sounds almost as though you made a personal friend of the girl, Gladdie!’
    Gladys opened wide her lovely eyes. ‘Why, so I do!’
    Alfred looked uncomfortable.
    â€˜So I do!’ said the Bride again. ‘And why not, pray? There, you see, you know of no reason why I shouldn’t be friends with her, you goose! But I won’t speak of her any more as Bella, if you don’t like—except to her face. I shall call her what I please to her face, sir! But, indeed, I wouldn’t have spoken about her at all to-day, only I was interested to know her young man was out there; and Gran seemed as interested as me, for he went on asking questions—’
    Alfred was quite himself again.
    â€˜Any way, darling,’ he said, interrupting her with a kiss, ‘I am glad you have got over your prejudice against Gran!’—and he went out, looking it; but leaving behind him less of gladness than he carried away.
    The conversation had taken place in the little morning-room in the front of the house, which faced the west; and the strong afternoon sunshine, striking down through the trembling tree-tops, dappled the Bride’s face with lights and shadows. It was not, at the moment, a very happy face. All the reckless, radiant, aggressive independence of two or three weeks ago was gone out of it. The bold, direct glance was somewhat less bold. The dark, lustrous, lovely eyes were become strangely wistful. Gladys was in trouble.
    It had crept upon her by slow degrees. Shade by shade the fatal truth had dawned even upon her—the fatal disparity between herself and her new relatives. This was plainer to no one now than to the Bride herself; and to her the disparity meant despair—it was so wide—and it grew wider day by day, as her realisation of it became complete. Well, she had made friends with Granville: but that was all. The Judge had been distant and ceremonious from the first: he was distant and ceremonious still. He had never again unbent so much as at that tragic moment when he bade her rise from her knees in the wet stable-yard. As for Lady Bligh, she had begun by being kind enough; but her kindness had run to silent sadness. She seemed full of regrets. Gladys was as far from her as ever. And Gladys knew the reasons for all this—some of them. She saw, now, the most conspicuous among her own shortcomings; and against those that she did see (Heaven knows) she struggled strenuously. But there were many she could not see, yet; she felt this, vaguely; and it was this that filled her with despair.
    It was green grass that she gazed out upon from the morning-room window, as the trouble deepened in her eyes; and in Australia she had seldom seen grass that was green. But just then she would have given all the meadows of England for one strip of dry saltbush plain, with the sun dropping down behind the far-away line of sombre, low-sized scrub, and the sand-hills flushing in the blood-red light, and the cool evening wind coming up from the south. The picture was very real to her—as real, for the moment, as this shaven grass-plot, and the line of tall trees that shadowed it, with their trunks indistinguishable, in this light, against the old brick wall. Then she sighed, and the vision vanished—and she thought of Alfred.
    â€˜He can’t go on loving me always, unless I improve,’ she said dismally. ‘I must get more like his own people, and get on better with them, and all that. I must! Yet he doesn’t tell me how to set to work; and it’s hard to find out for oneself. I am trying; but it’s very hard. If only somebody would show me how! For, unless I find out, he can’t care about me much longer—I see it—he can’t!’
    Yet it seemed that he did.
    If attending to the most extravagant wish