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himself. He had seen her eyes change while Burrell was speaking, and he knew dumb insolence when he met it. His almost-feminine intuition told him that there was more to her than met the eye.
    Plenty of time to find out, though. The Board’s remit meant that he would have the opportunity to discover exactly what poor plain Hester Waring was made of!

Chapter Three
    L achlan Macquarie was reading the brief report sent to him by Jardine concerning the School Board’s decision to appoint Hester Waring on probation, thinking to himself that he saw the Machiavellian hand of Tom Dilhorne in its form, when Lieutenant Munro put his head around the door to inform him that Colonel O’Connell, his successor as Lieutenant Colonel of the 73rd Foot, had arrived and was waiting to see him.
    He sighed and put the report down. O’Connell’s visits these days were not usually pleasant ones. He disliked intensely many of the measures which Macquarie was introducing, seeing them as pandering to the convict population. He wondered what it was that O’Connell wanted to complain about this time.
    â€˜Send him in,’ he ordered wearily.
    O’Connell was a big man, running to fat in the peace of Britain’s southernmost frontier.
    â€˜Good to see you,’ said the Governor after the formalities had been dispensed with.
    O’Connell grunted, and said coolly, ‘You might not be so happy when you’ve heard what I have to say.’
    â€˜No?’ said Macquarie. ‘What is it this time, Jock?’
    â€˜Dilhorne,’ returned O’Connell heavily. ‘There’s a rumour goin’ around—I don’t know whether there’s any truth in it, mind, since it seems to have started with Jack Cameron…and you know how unreliable he is—that you intend to make a magistrate out of Tom Dilhorne of all people. The man came here in chains, he’s still as artful as the devil, has taken over everything in sight—they say that somehow he’s even persuaded the Yankees to let him in on their whaling business.
    â€˜You know as well as I do that he owns a controlling interest in the brickfields—I curse him every time the wind blows from that direction and covers us all in red dust—he monopolises haulage, is probably the man behind Dempster’s woollen mill, is fighting Will French for control of quarrying, and on top of that, is almost certainly the money man behind the building contractor who is changing Sydney for you…’
    He ran out of breath before he had finished detailing the whole of Tom’s empire in the colony. After all, Macquarie knew its scope as well as he did.
    â€˜All of that,’ returned Macquarie coolly, ‘would justify me in making such a man of substance a magistrate rather than not.’
    â€˜Goddammit,’ roared O’Connell violently, ‘the man’s a felon! And how did he gain such a control of everything so quickly, tell me that?’
    â€˜Ex-felon,’ said Macquarie, determined not to be ruffled. ‘He has served his term, and I have no reason to believe that he has been criminal in acquiring his wealth. He’s known, in fact, for being a man of his word. All the more credit to him when you realise that he arrived here as a very young man with absolutely nothing. I consider that such a career deserves to be rewarded, not punished. The colony needs such people.’
    â€˜Needs such people!’ howled O’Connell, fascinated. ‘What in God’s name has happened to you, Lachlan, since you became Governor here? I never thought that you, of all people, would be soft on criminal scum. What a cake you’re making of yourself.’
    â€˜Tom Dilhorne is a talented man,’ said Macquarie steadily. ‘He is bound to stay here, he cannot ever return to England, and the colony needs men of intelligence and vision whose allegiance is to Sydney and to New South Wales and not to some