Cirrus@Austlit

From a Murray River homestead, elderly Ellinore Frankland recalls her youth in Kent and her intense love for Vivian Earle who seemed to return it until he fell in love with her younger sister Lucy. Lucy died in childbirth two years later and Vivian several months after on the Irish hunting fields, leaving Ellinore to bring up their daughter Vivienne. After her father's death Ellinor took V. to East Melbourne to live with her brother Robert, and soon they met the Herndales, old friends of Ellinore's mother. V. goes to their station on a visit and meets the handsome flirtatious George Herndale, who seems genially indifferent until a rich personable rival attaches himself to her, when he asks V. to marry him. Aside from the poisonous barbs of his 'old friend' Miss Darrell all goes well until the beautiful Adelaide Lindsay appears at a ball. George comes to love her and V. senses all, finally committing secret suicide as a sacrifice to set them free. Strong sense of narrator as 'watcher'.