Inheritors

Under the ferocious heat of the Queensland midsummer afternoon the
iron roof cracked and strained. The family sitting round the table
in the big dining-room of Cabell's Reach stared down anxiously at
their plates as though expecting the flimsy shell of rafters to
splinter over their heads. About them lay the debris of
festivities into which fear had intruded, petrifying them with
their hands full of tinselled paper and the gewgaws vomited by bon-
bons. Against the distress, anger, or resentment on...