In the course of the following year Reuben had news of all his absent sons, except Benjamin, who was never heard of again.

One day Caro came home from Rye, where she had gone with the vegetables to market, and said that she had met Bessie Lamb. Bessie was on her way to the station, where she would take the train for Southampton. Robert had written that he was now able to have her with him in Australia, and she had at once packed up her few belongings and set out to join him in the unknown.

Bessie was now thirty, and looked older, for she had lost a front tooth and her pretty hair had faded: but she was as confident of Robert\'s love as ever. He had[Pg 334] written to her by every mail, she told Caro, and they had both saved and scraped and waited and counted the days till they could consummate the love born in those fields eternally fixed in twilight by their memory. There had been no intercourse between Odiam and Eggs Hole, so, as Robert had never written to his family, Caro heard for the first time of the sheep-farm in Queensland and its success. He had done badly at first, Bessie said, what with the drought and many other things against him, but now he was well established, and she would be far better off and more comfortable as the felon\'s wife than she had ever been as the daughter of honest parents.

She left Caro with a restless aching in her heart. In spite of the lost front tooth and the faded hair, she had impressed her in much the same way as Rose on her wedding night. Here was another woman sure of love looking confidently into a happy future, wooed and sought after, a man\'s bride.... Jolting home in the empty vegetable cart beside Peter, one or two tears found their way down Caro\'s cheek. Oh, if only some man, no matter whom, tyrant, criminal, no matter what, would love her, give her for one moment those divine sensations which she had seen other women enjoy! Why must she alone, of all the women she knew, be loveless?

It was her father\'s fault, he had kept her to work for him, he had starved her purposely of men\'s society—and now her youth was departing, she was twenty-nine, and she had never heard a man speak words of love, or felt his arms about her, or the sweetness of his lips on hers.

When they came to Odiam, she told Reuben what she had heard about Robert.

"Would you believe it, he has a hundred sheep—and a man working under him—and money coming in quite easy now. It wur hard at first, Bessie says, and[Pg 335] he wur in tedious heart over it all, but he pulled through his bad times, and now he\'s doing valiant."

"And who has he got to thank fur it, I\'d lik to know? Who taught him how to run a farm, and work, and never spare himself and pull things through? There he wur, wud no sperrit in him, gru............