The two figures were disturbingly close. Ezekiel, presumably, had other investments — Overflow, after all, had been profitable for many years before Clancy’s marriage. But how much of that had gone on the settlement of the viscount’s debts that had sealed his marriage? In calculations like these too, Clancy was forced to realise that he valued Overflow not just as a source of income, but as his heart’s country.

He loved his wife. He loved their life. Neither had the thrall of Overflow.

It was spring of his fifth year of marriage, on one of his visits home, that he looked at the wonga blossom blooming in great drapes from the red gums along the river, the lilies opening white plate flowers at the billabong where he rested his horse on his way back to Sydney, that he wondered if, just possibly, Flora might consider sojourns at Overflow as well.

Not often, of course — she had her life in Sydney — but perhaps in summer, when even on their hill the stench of sewage won over the harbour’s salt winds and the butter melted in its water-cooled pottery butter jar — maybe then they could stay at Overflow for a month, or even two.

Flora had been on the point of visiting his home several times, but there had always been a Government House function she must attend, or visiting dignitaries who must be entertained.

The hard eight-day journey — the last two days of which would need to be by cart, as the riding was too hard for a woman to do in a day — was too wearisome for Flora to attempt it often, nor of course did Overflow have anything like the elegance she was used to. But perhaps she and Maria together might make it a gentleman’s establishment, or at least one in which she would enjoy a few months’ break from the city every year. Ezekiel would surely accept suggestions from Flora.

He imagined himself sitting next to her on a picnic blanket by the river, watching the swans fly west in a long dark arrow. Flora would love the lambs pushing each other off the rocks to play king of the castle, tails wiggling till the men cut them off . . .

He dreamed all the way back to Sydney, ignoring the flea bites at the shanties, the flies that crawled over his arms and face, all irritations he was so used to that he hardly noticed them any more. Flora found him bathing off the scent of horse, his clean clothes — city clothes — waiting on his bed, while Sydney — his valet’s mother had had little imagination with names — waited with a jug of fresh hot water. She sat behind the screen as he dismissed Sydney, wrapped himself in a towel and came to kiss her.

‘You should have come to find me,’ she reproached him. ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t make it back in time.’

‘In time for what?’