With all his essential cynicism, there was the breadth and tolerance of a travelled man.
Cosmopolitan on the other hand, he could not be called; he had proved himself too poor a linguist in every country that they had visited.

It was only now, in their home life, that Rachel received hints of the truth, and it filled her with vague alarms, for that seemed to her to be the last thing he need have kept to himself.
One day she saw him ride a fractious horse, not because he was fond of riding, but because nobody in the stables could cope with this animal.
Steel tamed it in ten minutes.

But a groom remarked upon the shortness of his stirrups, in Rachel's hearing, and on the word a flash of memory lit up her brain.

All at once she remembered the incident of the gum-leaves, soon after their arrival; he had told Morna what they were, yet to his wife he had pretended not to know.

If he also was an Australian, why on earth should that fact, of all facts, be concealed from her?
Nor had it merely been concealed; it was a point upon which Rachel had been deliberately misled, and the only one she could recall.
She was still brooding over it when a fresh incident occurred, which served not only to confirm her suspicions in this regard, but to deepen and intensify the vague horror with which her husband's presence sometimes inspired her.
Mr.Steel was an exceptionally early riser.