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The old woman subsided, nodded a little, and then made up her mind to go to bed. When she had done so Colvin returned, accompanied by Stephanus. Aletta’s bright face lit up at sight of him, and with the consciousness that she could now laugh unrestrained.

“Upon my word, Miss De la Rey,” he said, “your respected relative is something of a terror. First, she wants to make me three or four hundred years old by assigning me for grandfather some historic old bore who flourished in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, I forget which. Then she is eager to rush me into a haphazard matrimonial contract. No, really it is laying it on just a little too thick.”

“Oh, it was awfully funny. But, do you know, Mr Kershaw, we had heard just the same thing? We didn’t tell her, you know, but we had heard it,” said Aletta, her face brimming over with mischief.

“Well, you heard what has no foundation in fact, what is entirely untrue,” he answered, with some vague stirring over the emphasis wherewith he did answer, remembering the psychological moment of two or three nights ago.

“You met the Patriot here not long since, did you not, Mr Kershaw?” said Aletta, changing the subject with perfect ease.

“Which Patriot? There are so many patriots now,” he replied.

“Why, the Patriot. The one from Pretoria, of course.”

“Andries Botma? Oh yes, I met him. We had some very interesting talk together. I had long wanted to see him.”

“But – but – you are not of us,” said the girl, looking up quickly from her work-basket.

“This little girl is a red-hot patriot, Colvin,” said Stephanus, resting a large hand lightly upon the silky brown coil. “But, to be serious, I hope this will all quiet down and find its level.”

“Of course; are we not all jolly good friends together, Stephanus? We don’t want to be at each other’s throats at the bidding of other people.”

This remark brought Aletta up.

“But you said you had long wanted to meet the Patriot, Mr Kershaw. Why did you want to see him, then?”

“Because he is something unique – a really honest agitator. He means what he says and believes every word of it most thoroughly. He is full of verve and fire – in a word, a strong man. His is an immensely striking personality.”

“Well done, well done,” cried Aletta, clapping her hands enthusiastically. “I shall make a convert of you yet. Oh yes, I shall.”

It became bedtime. As she gave him his candle Colvin once more could not help being struck with the refined grace of Aletta’s every movement – the soft, clear, thoroughbred tone of her voice. She seemed somehow to have been cast in a different mould from her sisters, to whom he had always pictured her as inferior both in looks and presence. It fairly puzzled him. The tones of her voice seemed to linger long after he had retired. He had had a long, tiring, exciting day – had undergone a very narrow escape for his life – which circumstance, by the way, he had not yet mentioned to his host, being desirous to sleep on it first, and having enjoined strict silence upon his retainer – yet, now that he should have dropped into a sound, recuperative slumber, he could not. And the sole reason that he could not – as he must perforce admit to himself in the darkness and privacy of his chamber – was the recollection of this girl whom he had met but the first time that night – here, on a remote Dutch farm in the Wildschutsbergen. And she was “only a Boer girl!”

Chapter Ten.
“If – .”

“Well, child, and what do you think of ‘our only Englishman’?” said Mrs De la Rey, as they were putting away the “early coffee” things the following morning.

“I like him, mother,” replied Aletta. “I oughtn’t to because I have heard so much about him. That is sure to start one with a prejudice against anybody. Still, I think I shall. Oh, wasn’t Tant’ Plessis killing about ‘the only Englishman’ and ‘the only English girl’? By the way, was there anything in it?”

“Don’t ask me. I don’t know,” laughed her mother. “Only he seemed a little too anxious to deny it. One can never tell. May Wenlock is a very pretty girl.”

“Is she? I never saw her. I remember Frank Wenlock – a good sort of boy, but something of a lout. Now, this one is ever so different.”

“Oh, mijn Vaterland!” grunted a voice from the armchair. “There they are, jabbering English again – a tongue only fit for baboons.”

Mother and daughter looked round quickly, exchanged a meaning smile, and went on with their subject. They were accustomed to the old woman’s growls, and took no more notice of them than if she had been a discontented child.

“Let’s drive over and see the Wenlocks one day, mother,” said Aletta. “I am curious to see the only English girl here. Besides, I shall be able to see in a moment whether there is really any fire beneath Tant’ Plessis’ smoke. Yes – that will be great fun.”

“What sort of ideas have you brought back with you from Cape Town, child?” cried Mrs De la Rey, apparently shocked though really intensely amused.

“That’s all right, old mother. I have become ‘advanced’ – in fact, down there everybody took me for an English girl. And I have learnt to ride a bicycle. No, really, I wish I had one here. Only imagine Tanta’s face if I went skimming along the road there down to the gate and back on two wheels. Heavens, I believe it would kill her. She’d get a fit,” And again that silvery peal rang out long and clear.

“Aletta! Don’t make such a noise, child. Why, you have quite startled Mr Kershaw – look, away down there at the bottom of the garden. He is looking up this way, quite startled.”

“Is he? Where? Oh, I see,” following her mother’s glance through the window. “I think I’ll go and talk to him. He is going to be fun, I believe. You know, I like the English – those of the better sort – although I am a thorough patriot. This one is of the better sort – you can tell directly you see him, and you can hear it directly he opens his mouth. Oh yes, I’ve seen lots of them. Yes, I shall go and talk to him.”

Away she went, singing to herself. Her mother could see her through the window, stopping here and there to pick a flower or train up a drooping bough. Colvin did not seem aware of her approach. His head was bent down, and he seemed to be filling a pipe.

“Gertruida!”

Mrs De la Rey turned with a start.

“What is it, Tanta?”

“Where has the girl gone?”

“Who? Aletta?”

“Who? Aletta? What other girl has just gone out, I would like to know?” snapped Tant’ Plessis, bringing down her stick hard upon the floor. “Where has she gone?”

“Gone? Only to look at the garden after the rain,” answered poor Mrs De la Rey, somewhat guiltily.

“Now you are lying, Gertruida,” rapped out the old woman. “Ah, if I could only give you the strop again as I used to do when you were a child!” shaking her stick viciously. “You, a mother of a grown-up family, to lie like that. Really you are a case to bring before Mynheer and the Kerkraad (Church Council). You know perfectly well that that girl has gone out to flirt with the Englishman.”

“She has not, Tant’ Plessis. You have no right to say such things,” retorted Mrs De la Rey, stung to momentary wrath. “It is you who are saying what is not true about my child.”

“Stil, stil! So that is the result of all the strop I used to give you, Gertruida – to call your elders liars! You think I know no English. I do, although I would sooner die than speak the accursed tongue. I heard Aletta say she was going out to flirt with the Englishman.”

“She didn’t say ‘flirt,’ Tanta. She said ‘talk.’”

“Well, well! What is the difference, I would like to know? To go out like that – to go up to a man and talk with him all alone in a garden! So that is the result of sending her to learn English ways. English ways, indeed! No wonder the English were made, like the heathen of old, to fall before the rifles of the Patriots. They were. I have heard Mynheer say so, and if he doesn’t know, who does?”

“I don’t care what Mynheer says – or thinks, Tanta. I shall bring up my children in my own way,” flashed out Mrs De la Rey, losing patience.

“In the devil’s own way you mean, Gertruida,” said the other, waxing very portentous and solemn. “Look at my own children – five girls and seven boys. My girls got plenty of strop” – (“Surely they did!” interpolated the listener to herself) – “and now that they are married they give theirs plenty too. For what says the Prophet Solomon in the Holy Book: ‘Spare the strop and you spoil the girl.’ The Prophet did say that, for I have heard Mynheer read it out in church.” The speaker herself could scarcely read. “Look at my girls. They learnt no English ways.”

In imagination Mrs De la Rey did so look, and beheld five women who were exact counterparts of their proud parent, albeit younger presentments, and each owning a large brood as heavy as herself. But she had had enough of this lecture, and began to cast about for a pretext to depart.

Aletta the while was tripping down the garden path, pausing, as we have said, as though to tend the flowers had been her sole object in coming out, and as she walked she sang:

 
“Spreek, Bronkersspruit,
Met eerbied uit;
Noem Potchefstrom by naam.
Pretoria en Langsnek pas,
Ingogo en Majuba vas,
Waar ons Verlosser met ons was,
Vermeld die al te saam.
Vermeld die al te saam.”
 

Colvin Kershaw pricked up his ears, but did not raise his head. For that which she was singing was a snatch of the Transvaal “Volkslied,” the Republican National Anthem. She was singing it at him, of course. This was really getting funny. She was quite close to him now.

 
“Ons vrye vlag
Geef nou onstag,
Die vierkleur waal in eer,
En wapper oer die Republiek;
Geen mag, geen lis, geen politiek
Van Kaffer, Brit, of Jingo-kliek,
Haal ooit die vlag weer neer.
Haal ooit die vlag weer neer!”²
 

“Good morning, Mr Kershaw. You are up early. Englishmen are not fond of early rising as a rule.”

“Good morning, Miss De la Rey. You seem in a vastly patriotic mood this morning. Can a poor Englishman by any chance do anything that comes within measurable distance of being right?”

Aletta laughed, but not quite in the same whole-hearted way she usually did. There was something in the look of this man, standing there, easy, good-humoured, smiling, which seemed to strike her. She had been favourably impressed with him the evening before, when he had not shown externally to the best advantage, and, whatever cheap ethicists may propound to the contrary, externals and impressions go very much hand in hand. Now he was clad in his own clothes, not in scratch garments many sizes too wide for him. As she had just been telling her mother, she had seen at a glance that he was thoroughbred; now he looked more so than ever.

“Oh yes, he can – sometimes,” she said. “You know, I like the English of a certain sort, though I detest those of another.”

“Well, why do you bear down upon me singing an aggressive war-song – at me? At me, of course.”

“Was I?”

“You know you were. You were rubbing in Bronker’s Spruit, and Ingogo, and Majuba, and all that.”

“It’s rather chilly after the rain,” she said, looking around with a shiver. “But it is going to be a lovely day.”

Her irrelevant prediction was true enough. Not a cloud remained in the sky, which was deepening more and more to its vivid daylight blue, as the sun, just rising over a great ironstone krantz which crested the range beyond the river, flooded the wide valley, dissipating the faint mist engendered by the night’s moisture, and causing the raindrops still lingering on the Karroo bushes and scattered mimosa to scintillate like the purest diamonds. Birds twittered among the willows by the dam, and in the quince hedges, and away over the wide veldt, the cock koorhaans answered each other in their shrill, barking crow, as though rejoicing in the glowing splendour of the newly-born day.

“Yes, I think it is,” he answered. “But, to come back to what we were saying. I don’t think that ‘Volkslied’ is much of a song, you know. For instance, ‘Van Kaffer, Brit, of Jingo-kliek’ is a pretty good sample of doggerel. Then, again, the whole thing is a little too pietistic for ordinary use. The tune is a fine one, but the words – well, they are a trifle poor.”

“Are they? Oh yes – and what about ‘God Save the Queen’? Isn’t that just as pietistic? And ‘Confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks’ – how is that for doggerel, eh?” And, firing up with her subject, Aletta’s face became quite animated, and the colour rushed over it in such wise as to render it very attractive – at least, so thought the onlooker, and secretly rejoiced in the situation, enjoying it hugely.

“H’m, well, perhaps. But, doesn’t it strike you, Miss De la Rey, that you are wasting your cartridges by blazing them into me? Why, I am more than half of your way of thinking already. Ask your father if I am not.”

The girl’s face changed entirely, taking on a wondrously pleased expression. The defiant one had utterly vanished. Colvin began fumbling for a match wherewith to relight his pipe, which had gone out. In reality he was thinking what there was about this girl which appealed to him so strongly. She was not even pretty. Yet, standing there, tall and graceful and fresh, in the early morning; a very soul of mind looking out of her eyes with the enthusiasm born of a cherished subject, she was more – she was marvellously attractive. The strange, lingering feeling which her presence had left upon him the night before was intensified here in the prosaic morning hour. What was it?

“There are patriots, however,” he went on, “who are not always shining angels of light. Listen now, and I’ll tell you what happened to me yesterday in that connection. Would you like to hear?”

“Of course I would.”

Then he told her – told her everything, from the discovery of the concealed arms to the suspicious non appearance of the man he had gone to see; of Hans Vermaak’s mysterious warning, and the subsequent ample justification thereof – the narrow escape he and his servant had had for their lives when fired upon murderously in the darkness by ambushed assailants – up to the time of his arriving at Ratels Hoek, when she had first seen him. Told her the whole story – her – this girl whom twelve hours ago he had never seen – this girl only just out of her teens. Told her, when as yet he had not told her father, a strong man of mature age, and one of his most intimate friends. Why did he do it? He hardly knew himself, unless it were that something in her personality appealed to him as marking her out not merely from the rest of her sex, but from the general ruck.

She listened attentively, absorbedly; her eyes fixed upon his face.

“Yes, that was bad,” she said. “But then, you know, Mr Kershaw, as you English say – there are black sheep in every flock, and the people back there in the Wildschutsberg are a low class of Boer, very little removed from bijwoners (squatter labourers). But” – as if she had said too much and was trying to cover it – “do you not think they may have been only wanting to frighten you; to play a joke on you?”

“It was a joke that cost me an uncommonly good mare,” he answered. “The poor brute was plugged through and rolled into the river. I dare say she is half-way down to the sea by this time – as I and Gert would have been but for, I suppose, Providence.”

She was looking grave enough now, and for a few moments made no reply.

“What are you going to do about it?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

He fancied a look of relief came into her face. She must be intensely imbued with the cause of her countrymen, with racial partisanship, he decided.

“Nothing? But if you think they tried to murder you?”

“Oh, I don’t think much of that. I’m not going to bother any more about it. Why should I?”

“But you English are always such a – well, vindictive race. It is one of your favourite boasts that you never let anybody get the better of you – that you are always even with them – I think that is the phrase,” she said, and there was a strange look upon her face which rather puzzled him.

“Are we? Well, here’s an exception then. Life is too short to bother oneself about trifles merely for the sake of ‘being even with’ somebody. Likely one of these days Gideon Roux will be the first to be sorry he shot at me. He needn’t have done it. The cave affair and the rifles didn’t concern me. I shouldn’t have given it away. But he won’t come down with the value of the mare, because I believe the poor devil is none too flush at any time. So what does it matter?”

That strange look upon Aletta’s face deepened. He did not quite know how to read it.

“Have you told father about this?” she said.

“Not yet. I had meant to. I don’t think I shall at all now. It doesn’t seem worth while.”

“Then why did you tell me?”

“I don’t know.”

Again they stood looking at each other in silence, as though reading each other. He was thinking of how he had seen her last night – bright, sparkling, girlish – full of humour and merriment; yet even then he had judged her temperament to have another side. Now his judgment was borne out. She could show herself serious, grave, judicious – in short, full of character when a matter of moment was under discussion. She for her part was thinking that of all the men she had met, and she had met many – for Stephanus De la Rey was connected with some of the best old Dutch families at the Cape, and in the society of the capital, Dutch or English, Aletta had not merely had the entrée, but had been in request – she had never come into contact with one who was quite like this. He was right outside her ordinary experience.

A sound of approaching hoof-strokes aroused them – on Aletta’s part with something of a start. A bridle path threaded the garden here, affording a considerable short cut up from the river drift, and the horseman now advancing along this had come out through the quince hedge almost upon them. In him they recognised Adrian De la Rey.

“Daag, Aletta. I have only just heard you were home again,” he said in Dutch, as he sprang from his horse and shook hands with her. But Colvin did not fail to notice that the young Boer’s greeting of himself was markedly cold, not to say grim.

“So ho!” said he to himself. “That is the way the cat jumps? I see.” Then aloud, “What sort of rifle have you there, Adrian?” For the latter was clad and armed as though for the chase, and had a bandolier full of cartridges slung round him.

“One of the new kind,” was the crisp reply. “A Mauser. Ja, you can kill a man at thousands of yards with this.”

“So you could, if you could only see him,” was the perfectly good-humoured reply.

“I shall see him plainly enough, at whatever distance. Ja, at whatever distance,” repeated the young Boer with meaning; and, looking as black as thunder, he turned his back upon the other in rather a pointed manner, and began to converse with his cousin.

“Yet,” said Colvin to himself, “yet we have always been the best of friends. But that would prove a very awkward customer if – Yes,” he repeated, always to himself. “If – ”

Note.

 
“Speak, Bronkersspruit,
With pride speak out;
Call Potchefstrom by name.
Pretoria and Langnek’s Pass,
Ingogo and Majuba,
Where our Deliverer was with us,
Proclaim them all together.”
 

Chapter Eleven.
Love – and some Sport

“You are in no hurry to go on, are you, Colvin?” said Stephanus De la Rey, while they were at breakfast. “Because, if not, we might take guns and go down to the hoek. It’s swarming with duiker and blekbok.”

“Haven’t got my gun along, Stephanus, and Aasvogel won’t stand fire.” The speaker deemed he had grim reason to know that, and exchanged a glance with Aletta, who had looked up quickly, at the allusion.

“Oh, that is soon got over. You can have your pick of four horses that will, and you can either take my shot-gun or one of the rifles. There will be four of us – you and I and Cornelis and Adrian – and we can drive out that hoek thoroughly.”

“I don’t care to hunt to-day, Oom Stephanus,” said Adrian. “I must get back. I have many things to do at home.”

Stephanus looked narrowly at his nephew, whose manner struck him as strange. He had replied in Dutch, whereas the conversation hitherto had been in English, but that might be due to his new-born and exuberant patriotism.

“Of course, then, you must see to them, nephew,” he said. “The reason why so many of us don’t get on is, that we are too fond of sitting on the stoep and smoking our pipes.” He himself and his son had been at work in the “lands” and at the goatkraals ever since sunrise. At the same time he was rather surprised at the refusal of his nephew, who was a keen sportsman, and would have had a chance of testing his new rifle, which had already been inspected and its points critically discussed.

But Adrian had an object in his refusal, and the name of that object was Aletta. Hardly had the other three men got out of sight than he tried to persuade the girl to take a turn in the garden with him. Ordinarily she would have needed no persuasion, but to-day a sort of instinct rendered the idea distasteful to her. But he waxed eloquent upon their common topic – The Cause – and she yielded.

He told her about the delegate from Pretoria – “the Patriot,” as he reverentially termed him, and how that Olympian Jupiter had talked with him – had it been the President himself he could hardly have felt more proud. He told her how the seed had been sown on well-watered and well-prepared ground, and she listened with real interest, for they had an ideal in common, these two young people, and were both burning with a lofty enthusiasm. Besides, the girl was really very fond of Adrian, who was a fine, manly fellow. Now she predicted great things for him. He would rise to be one of the most prominent men in the new Dutch South Africa. There was no limit to the dazzling honours she beheld in store for him.

Yes, the conspiracy was nearly complete. There was not a Dutchman within a radius of fifty miles, he told her, who was not ready to rise, who would not muster at the appointed time and place, rifle in hand, to throw off the English yoke. Those cursed English! He trusted that their future rulers would not allow one single Englishman to remain in the country – no, not one. He hated them all.

This brought a meaning smile to Aletta’s face. She remembered Adrian’s manner when he had first come upon her – and the Englishman – but an hour or two before.

“But, Adrian,” she said, “why are you so bitter against the English now? You used not to be. Of course we must get the land back from them, but we need not drive them all out. Some of the better ones might remain.”

“There are no ‘better ones,’” he replied, vehemently.

“I would not say that. Our English neighbours round here, what few there are, seem nice enough. There is Mrs Wenlock, for instance, and Frank – I haven’t seen the daughter yet. And then there is that Mr Kershaw – he seems a particularly pleasant sort of man.”

At this the resentful scowl on Adrian’s face deepened. His strong hand opened and shut once or twice as though gripping at somebody’s throat.

“So you seemed to think when I came upon you this morning,” he answered in a sort of growl. Aletta started, and gazed at him in wide-eyed astonishment.

“Why, Adrian, I never saw the man until last evening,” she said, gently, but conscious that the colour was flowing over her face in waves. For the blunt retort had, as it were, in a flash opened her mind to herself, and what she saw therein had frightened her.

“So? Then you have turned your time to very quick use,” he answered. Then, seeing her start away from him with a cold, yet hurt, look, his tone changed entirely. “Forgive me, Aletta, darling. I am jealous, I suppose, and, of course, a fool. But I love you. I always have since we were children together. And I have been longing and longing for you to come back, and have been counting the weeks to it. Ask Andrina if I have not. Then when you do come back, and I see you for the first time, it is with this Englishman. Forgive me if I have said anything to offend you, Aletta, and say you will marry me. I love you so.”

His tone was deep and soft and pleading, and the listener, stealing a look at his face, could not but feel much moved. He was so intensely in earnest. And he was a really fine-looking young fellow was this young Dutchman, a lover of whom any girl might feel the reverse of ashamed. As a matter of fact this one did so feel, and her voice was very soft as she answered:

“Oh, Adrian, why did you ask me? I don’t see how I can.”

It was a pretty lame answer, and she felt it to be. He, for his part, proceeded to improve the occasion and to urge his cause again and again with all the arguments he could find. She, for hers, was dangerously tempted to temporise, but by some merciful instinct rejected that refuge for the weak. She answered him to the same effect as before, but this time more clearly, more decidedly.

Then he began to press her for reasons. Why did she persist in refusing him? He was well off, and could make her thoroughly comfortable. He defied anyone to say a word against his character or life. He was sure his uncle would approve, and so on. Then, waxing bitter, he hinted that since she had been away at Cape Town she had forgotten her own people. Only the English were good enough now.

Adrian had better have let that side alone. It spoiled the good effect he was already producing in that it was first of all somewhat childish – in the second place unjust.

“That is not true, Adrian,” she answered gravely, but without anger, “and you ought not to say it. I am of my own people as much as ever. I have seen English people, too, whom I like and admire. Those of good blood are second to no race in the world – for good blood is good blood all the world over. But you ought not to say some of the things you have been saying. You wound me and – insult me.”

“So? I wound you and insult you? Forgive me, Aletta. I would not do that for all the world. But look! As you say, you have only known this Englishman since last evening. That is good. But the man who comes between you and me – Englishman or who ever he is – had better take care, great care, for it will mean life or death to him or to me. The time is coming when every man’s rifle will be his law – the avenger of his own wrongs.”

The tone was quiet now. There was that in it which was so earnest, so free from vehemence as to redeem it from mere bounce or melodramatics. Aletta, listening, was secretly impressed, and secretly more than respected him.

“You would not do murder, surely, Adrian?” she said, the narrative she had heard only that morning rising luridly before her mind.

“No, not murder, only justice. The time is coming when we can call upon those who have wronged us to face us, man to man. That is not murder.”

“N-no. But does it not strike you, Adrian, that you may be doing your best to kill all the liking and regard I have always felt for you? And are you not taking a great deal too much upon yourself?” Then, with a considerable flash of spirit, “Who gave you any right to take possession of me in this cool and calm manner? What right have you to tell me whom I am not to be friendly with – yes, and even more, if I choose that it shall be so? I think you are taking a great deal too much upon yourself, and I tell you so. But there, do not let us quarrel,” she added, with sudden softening. “And I think it is time we returned to the house.”

“As you will, Aletta. But I could not help saying that I did, for I mean it – every word of it. Of course we will not quarrel. How could I quarrel with you?”

The tone was sad and grave, but there was a dignity about it that appealed to Aletta. She did not fail to notice, either, that the other had not come off badly under somewhat difficult and delicate circumstances.

The while those upon slaughter intent were pursuing their way. Colvin Kershaw was a very keen sportsman, and reckoned that life was never so thoroughly well worth living as at moments like this – when mounted on a good shooting-horse, an excellent gun in his hand, the whole day before him, and, spreading around, as fine a bit of veldt for providing a mixed bag as one could wish to range over – just rolling enough to be picturesque – the Karroo bush and the mimosa, which grew in solitary ragged clumps or lined along the river banks, affording plenty of cover for birds or the smaller kind of buck. The sun flamed down from a blue and cloudless vault, but without much power, for it was about midwinter, and the atmosphere of the high veldt was clear and exhilarating to the last degree.

Two Kafir boys had been sent round to the further side of the “camp,” with instructions to lure thither and keep occupied such vicious male ostriches as would otherwise have interfered with, and, so far as their jurisdiction extended, entirely prevented sport; and the three horsemen were riding abreast, fifty yards or so apart, at a slow foot’s pace. Behind them walked Gert, armed with a formidable thorn tack in case any of the aggressive bipeds should assail them in preference to being fooled by the diversion aforesaid. But just before they took up their positions, Cornelis being out of earshot, Stephanus remarked:

“I wonder what is the matter with Adrian, Colvin? I have never known him not want to hunt before. He was looking very strange, too.”

“He was,” replied the other, who had his own ideas upon that head.

“So? you noticed it, then? Well, my notion is this,” sinking his voice. “Adrian is slim. I believe he remained at home only to have a quiet talk with Aletta.”

“Yes?”

“I think so. They were always devoted to each other as children and then as they grew up together. I thought it good for her to go away and see something of the world and of people, so I sent her to some relatives of mine to Cape Town.”

“She has done them credit I don’t mind telling you, Stephanus, that even the little I’ve seen of your eldest daughter justifies me in saying she would show to advantage anywhere —yes, to the greatest advantage – in London or anywhere you like.”

“So?” said Stephanus, hugely delighted. “You think so, eh?”