“There’ll be lodes of gold at various levels,” he explained.

“We’ll take the shafts down as deep as need be.”

Stirling was impatient to get to work. So were we all. But for the time, until the golden plateau was Lynx’s own, there must be. secrecy.

There came the day when he called Stirling and me to the library. He solemnly opened a bottle of champagne and filled three glasses.

He said: “The land is mine. We have our fortune. We are going to be rich as few people have ever been.”

He handed a glass, first to me then to Stirling before he took the other.

“First,” he said, ‘to Nora, the founder of our fortunes. “

“It was sheer luck,” I insisted.

“I shouldn’t have known what to do about it without you.”

“You did the right thing. You came straight to me.” His eyes were shining with love and approval; and I thought I had never been so happy in my life.

“Now,” he said, ‘to us. The triumphant Triumvirate. “

Then we drank.

I said: “Are you sure? After all, as yet you have not sunk your shafts.”

Lynx laughed.

“Nora, even now we have found a nugget which weighs two thousand ounces. I’ll guarantee it is worth ten thousand pounds. And we have not yet begun. There’s gold up there, gold to make any miner’s dream come true. Don’t fret. We’re rich.

After all these years you’ve led us to what we’ve been looking for.”

We put down our glasses. I held out my hands. Lynx took one, Stirling the other.

“This is what I wanted more than anything,” I said. Lynx laughed at me.

“So you felt the gold fever, too, Nora.”

“No, not gold fever. I just want to give you both what you most want.”

Then Lynx held me in his arms again and said softly in a strangely tender voice: “Nora, my girl Nora.” Then he let me go and handed me as it were to Stirling. Stirling’s arms were round me and I clung to him.

“I believe I’m crying,” I said.

“People who don’t cry when they’re hurt will cry for happiness.”

Now the activity had started. Everyone was talking about the find.

Lynx had struck gold—real gold. They had always known he would one day. It was just his luck. The ground yielded its alluvial gold—a fortune in itself. But Lynx was not stopping there. He was sinking deep shafts and he was going to get the gold which he knew lay in the quartz reefs below the ground. He closed the old worthless mine, all workers were transferred to the new one and more were engaged. The scene of my father’s murder had changed completely. The birds had deserted the place; the sound of gunpowder explosions had frightened them away; steps had been cut in the earth to enable men to mount the plateau; drays were constantly passing along the road taking the gold to the bank in Melbourne. The place had been renamed. It was: Nora’s Hill.

I saw less of Lynx and Stirling. They were always at the mine. A place had been built there so that they could sleep in some sort of comfort when they did not come home. The fortune was being accumulated. I was constantly hearing of nuggets that had been found. I remember the excitement when one over two feet long was discovered. It was mentioned in the Melbourne papers and reckoned to be worth twenty thousand pounds.

There was a kind of breathlessness everywhere, but for me the excitement had worn off. I was not as happy as I had been in the first flush of discovery.

A stranger came to the house and was closeted a long time with Lynx.

Adelaide told me that he was her father’s lawyer and that he was going to England on Lynx’s business.

It was said that Lynx was now a millionaire. This was probably true, but he wasn’t satisfied. I wondered if he ever would be.

Once I said to him: “You are very rich now.”

He admitted it.

“You too, my dear. Don’t forget you have your share in our good fortune. Didn’t I say it was a triumvirate?”

“How rich?”

“Do you want figures?”

“No. They would mean little to me. But I believe it is rich enough.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“That now you might give up this feverish activity and leave others to work for you.”

“Other people never work for you as you work for yourself.”

“Does it matter? You have enough.”

“I’m going to get all the gold out of that mine, Nora.”

“You are insatiable … for gold.”

His eyes gleamed.

“No,” he said.

“I shall know when I have enough. I need to be very rich.”

“And then?”

“And then I shall do what I have always planned to do. I have waited a long time, but now I see the fulfilment in sight.”

He said no more then, but he alarmed me a little because there was a hardening of his lips and I knew that the thought of revenge was in his mind.

Revenge on the man who had had him sent away over thirty-five years ago! Did people harbour feelings of revenge for so long? A man like Lynx did, I knew. It worried me because I knew that there was no happiness to be found in revenge.

The months went by and Christmas had come once more. We had the usual celebrations in the English style: the hot meal in the burning heat of the day; the plum pudding steeped in brandy; the mock mistletoe. I remembered the last Christmas when the Lambs had come and been turned away. I wondered what had happened to them now and remembering the relentlessness of Lynx on that occasion I was apprehensive. At the beginning of January, the lawyer came to the house o these councils, but I noticed that afterwards there was a triumph in Lynx’s eyes; and I guessed it had something to do with his dreams of revenge.

One evening he asked me to play a game of chess with him and when I went to him, the door to his studio was open and he called to me to come in.

“Come here, Nora,” he said; and when I went to him he put his hands over my eyes; then he turned me round until I was facing the wall.

Then he took his hands away and said:

“Look!”

It was a portrait of me in my riding habit, my top hat slightly to one side, my eyes wide and the colour in my cheeks.

“All my own work,” he said.

“When did you do it?”

“Is that your first question? I show you a portrait of yourself and all you say is ” when? “

“But I did not sit for it.”

“Did you think that was necessary? I know every contour of your face, every fleeting expression.”

“But you have been so busy.”

“I have still had time to think of you. Tell me, do you like it?”

“Isn’t it rather flattering?”

“It’s as I see you.”

“I’m glad I look like that to you. I don’t to myself.”

“That’s how you are when you look at me.”

“But why is it hanging there?”

“It’s a good place for it … the best in the room.”

“But the other picture was there.”

He nodded and I saw it then, with its face to the wall.

“But when you sat at your table you could look straight at it.”

“Now I look straight at this.”

“Is that what you want?”

“My dear Nora, you are not showing your usual good sense. Should I put it there if I didn’t?”

I went close and examined it. It did flatter me. Had I ever looked so vital? Were my eyes so large and bright? Did I have that rosy flush?

“It’s as I see you,” he had said.

“So now you will look at my picture instead,” I commented.

“Yes.”

“And Arabella …”

“She is dead.”

“I see. that’s why you have hung me up there. When did you learn that she was dead?”

“Morfeli—he’s the lawyer who has been to England on business for me—went to Whiteladies. He came back with this news.”

“I see.”

“Do you, Nora?” he said; I believed he was on the verge of confidences, but he changed his mind and suggested we play our game of chess.

The heat was intense—far greater than last summer. The grass was dried up and there was anxiety about the sheep at the station; some of the workers died of the heat; but at Nora’s Hill the gold yield continued to be spectacular.

I had seen so little of Stirling since the discovery that when I came face to face with him on the stairs one day I complained of this to him.

“We’re busy at the mine, Nora.”

“You always are,” I retorted.

“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t found it for you.”

He laughed.

“Where are you going now?”

“To sit in the summerhouse.”

“I’ll join you in five minutes.”

It was pleasant to be with him, I told him when he came.

“It’s a mutual pleasure,” he answered.

“I wish there need not be this mad rush for more and more gold.”

“The mine has to be kept going.”

“Couldn’t you sell out now that you have your fortune?”

“I think that’s what my father will probably do, in due course.”

“Do you think he ever would? The more he gets the more he wants.”

Stirling rose at once in defence of his father, as I expected him to.

I wouldn’t have had it otherwise.

“He will know when the moment comes to stop. He’s making us all rich, Nora.”

“Yet what have these riches brought us? Things are the same—except that I see less of you.”

“And that’s a hardship?”

“The greatest hardship.”

He looked at me with a happy smile. I thought: He loves me. Why does he not say so? Now is the time. They have their gold; they can stop thinking of it. Let us give our minds to more important things.