But had this complex, fastidious, physically-refined creature the least comprehension of what life on the Upper Leura might mean?
And how about an Ideal dethroned from her pedestal and plumped down amid the crude realities of the nethermost Bush?
Mrs Gildea did not get to the wedding.

She was ordered to report on the mines of Western Australia, and was on the other side of the continent when the marriage took place.

In fact, it seemed doubtful whether she would again meet Lady Bridget before her mission as Special Correspondent ended.

But the McKeiths were to spend their honeymoon in travelling to his station on the Upper Leura, a distance of some hundreds of miles from the nearest port, and quite out of THE IMPERIALIST programme.
She read, however, circumstantial accounts of the wedding, and there were portraits of the pair--in which Colin looked grumpy and Lady Bridget whimsically amused--snap shots, too, of the wedding cortege, in which Sir Luke Tallant, fathering the Bride, appeared a pompous figure in full uniform; and Lady Tallant in splendid panoply, most stately and gracious.

A long account followed of the bride's family connections, in which the biographer touched upon the accident of sex that had deprived her of the hereditary honours; the ancient descent of the Gavericks, with a picture of the old Irish castle where Lady Bridget had been brought up--and so forth, and so forth.