nomic soul, and had countermanded the jingle, and had asked the Prydes if they would go halves in a closed landau.
"Oh, Elsie, look!" cried Miss Pryde as they drove in at the great gates.
The grounds had been turned into fairyland. The avenue of young bunyas was like an avenue of overgrown Christmas trees—pyramids of coloured lamps. And all the paths were outlined in coloured lamps, and Japanese lanterns were dotted about the trees and festooned the colonades, and over all the full moon shed a ghostly radiance. Within, it was even more like fairyland still. Canvas rooms had been thrown out—bowers of palm leaves, poinsettia, flowering yucca, and rich calladiums and all the rarest tropical plants. In one place a miniature fern tree gully with stuffed birds perched on the huge fronds as if about to take flight. Murmuring cascades, mossy grottoes, and banks of maidenhair and rock lilies. And further on, a mass of azaleas, and then a camellia tree, and here and there moss-bordered pools with fountains playing and water-lilies floating about. Of course Ina and Lord Horace were with the Waveryngs and the inmost circle of the Government House party. Lady Stukeley in the magnificence of crimson velvet, rose point, and diamonds that paled somewhat in glory beside Lady Waveryng's tiara, that was celebrated, but which were, nevertheless, finer than anything of the kind which the Leichardtstonians had ever seen. It was really an imposing sight, and Elsie wondered whether a Drawing-room could be much grander, the great ladies in their jewels, the Prince and his suite, with their decorations, and the uniforms and gold lace, and cocked hats, and swords that made up a background to the central figures. Everybody who had any sort of right to wear a uniform had put it on to-night, even to Minnie Pryde's father, who had once had some kind of appointment in a volunteer corps, and Mr, Torbolton, the Premier, who looked very uncomfortable, and nearly tumbled over his sword.
When Elsie had got over her entrance greeting, and the
