The boudoir door closed after the elders, and there was silence in the drawing-room. Herbert became restless, and wandered about the room opening books or fingering the ornaments in an aimless way; Nesta stared gloomily out of the window, and Brenda tried to read.
Eustace could stand the inaction and the unsympathetic company no longer, so, getting up, he strolled into the sweet-smelling conservatory to be alone.
There were scents there that always wafted him in memory back home--he loved the warmth and the plants. There was a large oval stage covered with flowers in the centre, and round this he strolled towards the outer door.
So it was about the wreck Bob had come to speak. What more painful news could he have to bring than they already knew? The boy's common sense told him that the details must have to do with the death of Aunt Dorothy; nothing of less importance could have brought Bob over. Perhaps he had met an eye-witness of the tragedy!
Perhaps there were last messages from the drowned girl!
Eustace turned a corner and came to an abrupt standstill. It seemed to him in that instant as if his very heart stopped beating and his hair stood straight on end.
It was absurd, of course. Bob had turned out to be no mere creation of his own brain, but this could be nothing else. Here was proof positive of Mr. Orban's words that one has but to think hard enough about a person to imagine one sees him.
With her back to the outer door--a white figure with a face as colourless as her dress--stood Dorothy Chase; nothing about her was lifelike except the familiar deep-brown eyes that gazed steadfastly on the startled boy.
It was an extraordinarily vivid hallucination, and not a little terrifying. Was it no fancy? Could it possibly be Aunt Dorothy's spirit come to visit her old home again? The thought leapt into the boy's mind.
Eustace was no coward, but the notion fairly paralyzed him; he could not have moved to save his life. One supreme effort he made.
"Aunt Dorothy," he whispered hoarsely, and could say no more, for his lips were parched, his throat was dry.
The vision raised a warning hand.
"Hush!" she said; "don't be frightened. I see Bob has not told you yet; but it is all right, darling. I am a real live human being, and no spirit. Just Aunt Dorothy come back to you safe and sound."
The words seemed to come from far away, and Eustace felt so queer he swayed to try and keep his balance. He was so giddy he must have fallen had the vision not swept forward and caught him. The feeling of those strong arms about him, the warm touch of Aunt Dorothy's face bent down to his, brought him with a jerk to himself again, and he did not faint. But even then he could not believe his senses.
"I don't understand," he gasped, shaking from head to foot in her arms; and he pressed his face tight against her shoulder to try and recover himself.
"Poor old chap!" said Aunt Dorothy, "how I have upset you! I never meant any of you to see me till you knew. Bob is breaking the news to father and mother gently. We were afraid the shock of joy would be too much for them, so we did not even cable, but came at once. A letter would have got here very little sooner than ourselves."
She talked on in a soft, soothing voice to give the boy time to pull himself together, and all the time she held him close.
"You--you weren't drowned," Eustace managed to blurt out.
"Very nearly, but not quite," was the reply; "my escape was like a miracle. Ah, here comes Bob at last."
"Have I seemed an awful time?" said Bob gently. "It was a difficult thing to do. Come--they are waiting for you."
The pair passed swiftly up the conservatory into the drawing-room.
Herbert was standing by the mantelpiece examining a piece of valuable Sevres china. As the stranger, accompanied by that white figure, crossed the room to the boudoir, the ornament fell with a crash, to be splintered into twenty pieces on the fender.
"Oh, what was that?" cried Brenda, starting to her feet and gazing after the apparition.
"It's Aunt Dorothy," said Eustace from the conservatory. "She was never drowned at all."
"What!" said Herbert sharply. "You are dreaming."
"Then we are all dreaming," said Eustace gravely. "You saw her for yourself."
It would be impossible to describe the scene that followed. When the boudoir door opened and the grown-ups all trooped out, headed by Aunt Dorothy, the commotion was beyond words. From the midst of it Mr. Chase slipped away, to return with Peter in his arms. Peter was in pyjamas and dressing-gown, rosy, and fresh roused from sleep.
"We can't let him be out of it all," said Mr. Chase. "I have told him of our joyful surprise, and he takes it quite calmly."
"Peter would," said Miss Chase, taking the wee fellow in her arms.
"I'm very glad I didn't drown you," Peter said serenely.
"Herbert--"
But he finished the sentence in an incoherent yell, kicking out right and left.
"What is the matter?" asked Dorothy in surprise.
"Eustace pinched my bare leg," Peter said irately, wriggling to the ground in order to avenge himself.
Eustace caught his wrists, and bending low, whispered,--
"You are not to tell tales. I told you that the other day. You don't want to be a low-down black-fellow, do you?"
Peter's face was crumpled with anger, and there is no saying what he would have done if Bob had not exclaimed,--
"Hulloa, Peter! haven't you a word for me?"
The shock was complete. Mr. Chase had not mentioned Bob's arrival, and Peter was wholly unprepared for seeing him.
"Bob!" he shouted, "good old Bob!" and sprang like a young cat at the big fellow, who caught him skilfully.
"When you have quite done throttling me I shall be glad," said Bob, after enduring the embrace of the merciless little arms a moment.
"But how did you get here?" demanded Peter of the long memory.
"Were you bewitched over to England?"
"Come, come," said Mr. Chase; "dinner first and stories afterwards.
We shall have to eat cinders as it is, I expect, and cook will give notice to-morrow."
"Every one must come into the dining-room, father," laughed Aunt Dorothy; "I can't part with one of you yet. We will talk while we eat."
In a moment everything seemed changed. All the severity had faded from the old people's faces; they could not have looked more delightfully "grannyish" if they had tried. The dreadful barriers of formality were broken down; no noisier, freer family party had ever gathered in the Queensland home than the one that peopled the stately old dining-room that night.
"This," whispered Brenda to Nesta, "is how we always were before Aunt Dorothy went away. Now you can see why we missed her."
The change was something like a fairy tale to the Bush children; every one seemed suddenly "magicked" into different beings. This, then, was home as mother had known it.
The story of Aunt Dorothy's rescue held the table spellbound; the very butler and footman forgot their duties as they listened.
It appeared that, having jumped into the water with Peter, Dorothy struck out as fast as possible to swim away from the ship, keeping a grip of the little fellow as best she could. But in the terrible commotion that occurred on the going down of the _Cora_ she lost her grasp, and Peter was swept away from her into the inky blackness of the night.
She swam, floated, called, it seemed to her for ages, but all in vain, and at last, in a state of utter exhaustion, she gave herself up merely to the thought of keeping afloat. She must have been many hours in the water, but, losing consciousness after a while, her next experience was to find herself on board a vessel of some sort--a schooner it turned out to be on her way out to the reefs for beche-de-mer fishing.