However,' Mrs Hensor concluded, 'the master will be here tomorrow to see into the rights of things.' 'How do you know that the master will be here to-morrow ?' asked Bridget sharply.
'Harry the Blower brought me a letter from Mr McKeith,' replied Mrs Hensor with malign triumph.

'I suppose he thought you'd be too busy doing things with Mr Maule to bother over the station affairs, and that Mr Ninnis might be out on the run--and so he wrote to tell me what he wanted done as he often used to before.' Lady Bridget closed her eyes, and leaned back against the pillows trying hard to control the muscles of her face, and not to betray her mortification.

Moreover, she was certain that Mrs Hensor had stated the exact truth.
'I should prefer to be alone,' she said, feeling the woman's eyes upon her.
'Then I'll go, as you don't want me,' returned Mrs Hensor.

'But if I was you, Lady Bridget, I'd take a dose of laudanum, and get myself into a perspiration, for I believe it's a touch of dengue fever you've got the matter with you.' A touch of dengue in tropical Australia may be serious or the reverse--sharp and short and critical, or tedious and less dangerous.
Lady Bridget's case was the sharp, short kind demanding prompt treatment.

When McKeith came home the following day, he found her delirious, and incapable of recognizing him.
Worn out as was the strong man's frame--not only with wild jealousy and tortured love, but with sleepless nights of patrol work, days in the shearing-shed, sharp fighting with a second conflagration--fortunately put out before much damage had been done--and a final dispersion of Unionist forces, Colin never for one instant relaxed his watch by Bridget's bedside.
All night he tended her, fighting the fever as he had fought the fire at Breeza Downs, plying her with continued fomentations, dosing her with quinine, laudanum and the various medicines he had found efficacious.