entertainments. The Prydes had a picnic, which wound up with a dance, and the arrival of the new Governor was an occasion for social functions of a public character. Lord Horace and Ina came down and established themselves in an hotel boarding-house on Emu Point, and Blake found it convenient also to take up his temporary abode there, though he had to cross the river to get to the Houses of Parliament. A great many gentlemen lodged at Fermoy's, as it was called, its proprietor being a certain widowed Mrs. Fermoy, who took a motherly interest in her lodgers and carefully made it known that she had no matrimonial intentions. Mr. and Mrs. Jem Hallett did not patronize Fermoy's. They took a small furnished house on the North Side, and Mrs. Jem at once made it evident that she intended to belong to the Government House set, she was so ultra-English in all her ways. Frank Hallett naturally stayed with them, but very few days passed on which he did not on some pretext or other find his way across the river to Emu Point. Indeed, at this time Miss Valliant's admirers were a small source of revenue to the proprietors of the Emu Point ferry, there were so many of them, and even if they did not actually call at Riverside they haunted the Point in the hope of meeting Elsie on her way to and from the North Side. They were certainly a great worry to Mrs. Valliant, who thought that the detrimentals kept off desirable suitors, and who was afraid that Frank Hallett's constancy would give way under the strain to which Elsie subjected it. She consoled herself by the reflection, since Elsie gave her the assurance, that the two understood each other. In any case it was useless to try and curb Elsie's humour.
The girl was in a wild mood. She had never before rushed so eagerly into excitement. She seemed to live for amusement, getting through her household duties by dint of rising at an unearthly hour, in order that she might rush over to the North Side on pretence of shopping, and stroll about the streets and the gardens with Minnie Pryde, seeking whom she might entrap into her toils. It was not a very dignified or a very womanly manner of proceeding,
