She, too, with the exercise of riding through the night-air, and the company of a handsome, agreeable, well-bred man, began to have a lurking idea that she had been making a fool of herself; when they came suddenly on a hut, dark, cheerless, deserted, standing above a black, stagnant, reed-grown waterhole.
The hut where Frank had gone to preach to the stockmen.

The hut where Lee had been murdered--an ill-omened place; and as they came opposite to it, they saw two others approaching them in the moonlight--Major Buckley and Alice Brentwood.
Then Alice, pushing forward, bravely met her, and told her all--all, from beginning to end; and when she had finished, having borne up nobly, fell to weeping as though her heart would break.

But Mary did not weep, or cry, or fall down.

She only said, "Let me see him," and went on with them, silent and steady.
They got to Garoopna late at night, none having spoken all the way.
Then they showed her into the room where poor Charles lay, cold and stiff, and there she stayed hour after hour through the weary night.
Alice looked in once or twice, and saw her sitting on the bed which bore the corpse of her son, with her face buried in her hands; and at last, summoning courage, took her by the arm and led her gently to bed.
Then she went into the drawing-room, where, besides her father, were Major Buckley, Doctor Mulhaus, Frank Maberly, and the drunken doctor before spoken of, who had had the sublime pleasure of cutting a bullet from his old adversary's arm, and was now in a fair way to justify the SOBRIQUET I have so often applied to him.

I myself also was sitting next the fire, alongside of Frank Maberly.
"My brave girl," said the Major, "how is she ?" "I hardly can tell you, sir," said Alice; "she is so very quiet.