Yes, they had been friends in Australia, that country which John Buchanan Steel elaborately and repeatedly pretended never to have visited in all his travels! Rachel could have smiled as she drew herself up with this point settled in her mind for ever; why, the room reeked of Australia! These cases had never been properly unpacked, they were overflowing with memorials of the life which she herself knew so well.

Here a sheaf of boomerangs were peeping out; there was an old gray wide-awake, with a blue-silk fly-veil coiled above the brim; that was an Australian saddle; and those glass cases contained samples of merino wool.

So it was in Australia as a squatter that Steel had made his fortune! But why suppress a fact so free from all discredit?
These were just the relics of a bush life which a departing colonist might care to bring home with him to the old country.

Then why cast them into a secret lumber-room whose very existence was unknown to the old Australian's Australian wife?
Rachel felt her brain reeling; and yet she was thankful for the light which had been vouchsafed to her at last.

It was but a lantern flash through the darkness, which seemed the more opaque for that one thin beam of light; but it was something, a beginning, a clew.