6Christmas came, and still no letter from Michael, though John had heard that he had arrived in Queensland. Fran had hoped so little that she was hardly even disappointed; the quiet, half-melancholy beginnings of happiness were stealing over her, and the more she thought of Michael the more the melancholy and the happiness merged together into a kind of hazy tranquillity. She was quite sure that Michael had forgotten her; he was one of those sudden, transient beings whom fate entirely ruled—so different from John, who carved his own fate relentlessly as he went along.
Not that she had forgotten Michael. Whenever she walked about the gardens or through the meadows to the lane, and whenever she heard the distant murmur of a piano, memories of him stormed at her; but they could not make her
