AustLit

Set on a Riverina station, a motherless girl Dorothy grown up with almost no female supervision - wild, untidy and beautiful - is found a governess, a titled Englishwoman earning her own living because of her husband's dissipation. The girl's resentment is overcome by the lady's grace and the discovery that she has no intention of marrying her father, the Colonel. An infatuation for the dandy superintendent of the station is soon quashed when he reveals his calculating ways - and he and his brother, a former valet and thief, are eventually arrested and tried for robbing the Colonel, abducting and nearly killing him. Dorothy marries her governess' brother-in-law when he succeeds to the title, and the governess marries the local doctor - a gentleman. Interesting a little for the contrast between the wild girl and the lady. (PB)