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"Oh! By the Alnwick Castle?" she repeated again – and in the catch in her voice, and the quickness of utterance, he knew she was talking at random, for the sake of saying something, in fact.

"Do you care to hear a little of what has befallen me since I went?" he said. "Then let us turn in here," as she made a mute but eager gesture of assent.

They had gained the entrance to the oak avenue at the back of Government House. Strolling up this, they turned into the beautiful Botanical Gardens. Nobody was about, save a gardener or two busied with their work.

"What I am going to tell you is so marvellous that you will probably refuse to believe it," he said, after narrating the incident of the sign upon the metal box which had arrested the uplifted weapons of the unsparing Ba-gcatya, and, of course, editing out all that might have revealed the real nature of the expedition. "I have never breathed one word of it to any living being – not even to those who were with me. I would rather you did not either, Lilith, because it is too strange for anybody to believe, and – for other reasons."

She gave the required promise, and he drew forth the box. At sight of this relic of the past, that sweet, entrancing, if profitless past – Lilith could no longer quite keep herself in hand. The tears welled forth, falling upon the metal box itself – hallowing, as it were, the sweet charm of its saving power.

"Your love had power to save one life, you see," he went on in a cold, even voice, intended to strengthen him against himself. "But look, now – see those marks on the lid, just discernible? Now – listen."

And Lilith did listen; and at the description of the awful rock prison, with its skeleton bones, the long hours of helpless suspense and despair – and the final struggle in the ghastly moonlight; the struggle for life with the appalling monster that tenanted it, her eyes dilated with horror, and with pallid face and gasping lips she begged him not to go on, so great a hold did the incident take upon her imagination, even there, in the blaze of the broad midday sunlight.

"I have done now," he said. "Well, Lilith – you see what that token of your love has rescued me from. It was given as an amulet or charm, and right well has it fulfilled its purpose. But – to what end?"

"Did you – did you come back with what you went for," she broke forth at last, as with an effort.

"Yes. Therein, too, you proved yourself a true prophet. And now tell me something about yourself."

"Were you – angry with me when you heard what I had done, Laurence?" she said, raising her eyes full to his.

"Angry? No. Why should I be? Your life is your own, though, as a rule, sacrificing ones' self to save somebody else, as your aunt rather gave me to understand was the case here, is lamentably apt to turn out a case of throwing away one's life with both hands. It is too much like cutting one's own throat to save somebody else from being hanged."

"And is that your way of wishing me well, Laurence?" she said reproachfully.

"No. I wish you nothing but well. It would be futile to say 'happiness,' I suppose."

"The happiness of doing one's duty is a hard kind of happiness, after all," she said, with a sad little smile.

"Yes. An excellent copybook maxim, but for all purposes of real life – bosh. Am I not in my own person a living instance to that effect? As soon as I pitched 'duty' to the dogs, why then, and only then, did I begin to travel in the contrary direction to those sagacious animals myself – which, of course, is simply appalling morality, but – it's life. Well, child, make the best of your life, and prove a shining exception to the dismal rule."

"Do you remember our talk on board the dear old Persian? Yes, we had so many, you were going to say; but I mean our first one, the first serious one – that night, leaning over the side, I asked you: 'Shall I make a success of life?' Do you remember your answer?"

"As well as though it were yesterday. I replied that the chances were pretty even, inclining, if anything, to the negative. Well, and was I right?"

Lilith turned away her head. He could see that the tears were not far away. Her lips were quivering.

"I likewise told you you were groping after an ideal," he went on.

"And I found it. Perhaps I had already found it when I asked the question. Oh, Laurence, life is all wrong, all horribly wrong and out of joint," she burst forth, with a passionate catch in her voice, as she turned and faced him once more.

"Yes, I know it is. I came to that conclusion a goodish while ago, and have never seen any reason since to doubt its absolute accuracy."

"All out of joint!" she repeated hopelessly. "It is as if our lives had been placed opposite each other on parallel lines, and then one of the lines had been moved. Then our lives lay apart forever."

"That's about it."

She was not deceived. His tone was hard; to all appearances indifferent. Yet not to her ear did it so ring. She knew the immensity of effort that kept it – and what lay behind it – under control. Then she broke down entirely.

"Laurence, my love – my doubly lost love!" she uttered through a choking whirlwind of sobs. "Teach me some of your strength – some of your hardness. Then, perhaps, I can bear things better."

"A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, remember, and perhaps you have shown me the weak link here – that of my 'hardness.' Child, I would not teach you an iota of it, if I could. It is good for me, but no woman was ever the better for it yet. But keep yourself in hand now. We are in a public place, although a comparatively secluded one. For your own sake, do not give way. And for the very reason that I feared to stir up old memories, I had intended to go through without attempting to see you once more. Tell me one thing – would it have been better had I done so?"

"Better had you done so? No – no. A thousand times no – Laurence, my darling. I shall treasure up this last hour we have spent together – shall treasure it as the sweetest of memories as long as life shall last."

"And I shall treasure up that reply. Listen! Twice has your love stood between me and death, as I have told you. Yet of the third time I have never told you. It was the day I decided to go up-country. I had done with life. The pistol was pressed hard against my forehead. I was gradually trying how much more pressure the trigger would bear. A hair's breadth would have done it. Then it seemed that your voice was in my ear. Your form stood before me. I tell you, Lilith, you saved me that day as surely as though you had actually been within the room. I put the pistol down."

"I did this?" wonderingly. "Why, that must have been the day I had that awful dream."

"It was. Hazon came in just after, and we made our plans for the expedition. I remember telling you of it that same afternoon."

"Why, then, if this is so, it must have been with some great purpose," she cried, brightening up, a strange, wistful smile illumining her face. "Oh, how glad I am you have told me this, for now I can see comfort – strength. In some mysterious way it seems as if our two lives were intertwined, that it would ever be in my power in some dim way to watch over yours. My darling, my darling – until this moment I had not the strength to part with you – now I have. Let me do so before it leaves me, for we have been here a very long time. I would have seen you off on board, but that I dare not. I simply lack the strength of will to bear that, Laurence, my dear one. We had better say good-bye here – not in the crowded street. Then I will go – alone."

Both had risen, and were holding each other's hands, were gazing into each other's eyes. Thus they stood for a moment. Nobody was in sight. Lilith lifted her lips, and they moved in a barely audible murmur.

"Good-bye, my ideal!"

One long, close, farewell kiss, and she was gone. And the man, as he flung himself back on the garden seat, with his eyes fixed dreamily on the jutting end of the massive rock wall of Table Mountain towering on high to the cloudless blue, realized at that moment no elation such as one might feel who had found considerable wealth, and was returning full of hard, firm health to enjoy the same. More than ever at that moment did life seem to him all out of joint – more than ever, if possible; for his had been one of those lives which, from the cradle to the grave, never seems to be anything else.

CHAPTER XXXI.
CONCLUSION

"Well, Fay, I think that's about enough for one lesson. Down you get."

"Just once more round the park, father," was the pleading rejoinder. "I'm quite beginning to feel at home on Tricksie now."

Laurence gave way, and Tricksie darted off, perhaps a trifle too vivaciously for a learner of the noble art of horsemanship. But the girl kept her seat bravely, and the conceded scamper being brought to a close, she came round to where Laurence awaited, and slid from her saddle.

"Father, I won't have you call it 'lessons' any more," she cried. "I can ride now; can ride – do you hear!"

"Oh, can you?" laughed Laurence, thinking what a pretty picture she made standing there with the full light of the setting sun tinting the golden waves of her hair, playing upon the great dark eyes. Indeed, he owned inwardly to a weakness, a soft place as strange as it was unwonted, for this child of his. Yet she was something more than a child now, quite a tall slip of a girl at the angular age; but there was nothing awkward or angular even then about Fay Stanninghame.

"Well, hitch up the pony to the rail there," he went on. "Those two scamps can take him in when they are tired of careering around and whooping like Sioux on the war-path."

The two boys, also happy in the possession of a pony apiece, had lost no time either in learning to ride it.

"There's no part of a fool about either of those chaps," said Laurence, more to himself than to the girl, as he watched the two circling at full gallop in and out among the trees, absolutely devoid of fear. "Let's stroll a little, Fay; or would you rather go in?"

"Of course, I wouldn't," linking her arm in his. "Father, are we very rich now?"

"Oh, pretty warm. Think it fun, eh, child?"

"Fun? Why it's heavenly. This lovely place! Oh, sometimes I dream that this is all a dream, and then – to wake up and find it real!"

"Well, dear, be as happy as you like now – all day and every day. You have had enough of the other thing to last you a precious long time."

They strolled on through the sweet May evening – on beneath a great beech hanger, where cushats cooed softly among the green mast, and the air was musical with the sweet piping of thrushes and the caw of homing rooks. Here and there a gap in the hawthorn hedge disclosed a glimpse of red-tiled roof and farm stack – and nestling among the trees of the park the chimneys of the Hall.

Laurence Stanninghame had found this place by a mere chance. He might have purchased it for a third of its value, but he preferred not. Possibly he distrusted the wandering blood within him, possibly he did not lose sight of the fact that where he had found the great diamonds he had certainly left behind many more, to be found or not at some future time. So he rented the house and park, and extensive shooting and fishing rights. No more pinching and scraping now. To the children this change was, as Fay had said, "heavenly."

"How do people get rich in Africa, father?" said the latter, as they turned homeward.

"In various ways. They find gold mines with no gold in them, and then sell shares in them to a pack of idiots for a great deal of money. Or they perhaps find a few diamonds themselves. Or they trade in all sorts of things – ivory, and so forth."

He had stopped to light a pipe; Fay, intently watching his face through the clouds of smoke he was puffing forth, detected a lurking quizzical expression in his eyes, which roused her scepticism.

"I never quite know whether you are serious or not, father," she said. "But you never tell us any stories about Africa."

"I've got out of practice for story-telling, little one."

"But Colonel Hewett tells us plenty," – naming a neighbour, – "and yet he hasn't been so much in Africa as you have."

"Ah, he'll never get out of practice in that line," returned Laurence, with the same quizzical laugh.

"What a lot of adventures you must have had, father," went on Fay wistfully; for this was a sore subject both with herself and her brothers. They had expected tale upon tale of hair-raising peril – of lions and crocodiles and snakes and fighting Zulus. But woeful disappointment awaited. The last topic the returned wanderer seemed to care to talk upon was that of his wanderings.

Before they regained the house they were joined by the two boys, happy and healthy with their recent gallop, and full of the trout they were going to catch on the morrow under the tuition of the keeper. Laurence, dismissing them for a while, entered quietly by a back way. The post had come in, and with it an African mail letter. This he carried into his private sanctum. It was from Holmes.

"I hope the fellow isn't going to make trouble," he said to himself with a slight clouding of the brow. "He's idiot enough to turn pious – repentant, I suppose, they would call it – and give the whole thing away. 'Nothing but a curse can come of it, – the curse of blood,' the young fool said, or words to that effect. I wonder what sort of a 'curse' it is that puts one in possession of all this," looking out upon the soft, peaceful English landscape, hayfield and wooded hill, slumbering in the gathering dusk. "As if there could be a greater curse anyhow than being condemned to go through life that most pitiable object – a pauper with sixteen quarterings. No – no!"

He tore open the envelope, and in the fading light ran rapidly over its contents. Hazon had returned to Johannesburg, and had wound up all their affairs, and each of them was in possession of more than a small fortune. There was nothing, however, of the remorseful or the morbid about the writer now, and, turning over the page, Laurence broke into a short half laugh, for there followed the announcement of Holmes' engagement to Mabel Falkner of the blue eyes, and the usual transports and rhapsodies attendant upon such a communication. Skipping the bulk of this, Laurence returned the missive to his pocket with another sneering laugh.

"We shall hear no more about a 'curse' on our good fortune now, friend Holmes," he said to himself, "for you are entering upon an institution calculated to knock out all such Quixotic niceties. Ha, ha! I shouldn't be in the least surprised if in a little while you didn't hanker to start up-country again upon another 'ivory' trade."

But Holmes' letter had, as it were, let in a waft of the dark cloud of the Past upon the fair and smiling peacefulness of the Present, and he fell to thinking on what strange experiences had been his – of the consistent and unswerving irony of life as he had known it. Every conventionality violated – every rule of morality, each set aside, had brought him nothing but good – had brought nothing but good to him and his. Had he grovelled on in humdrum poverty-stricken respectability, what would have befallen him – and them? For him the stereotyped "temporary insanity" verdict of a coroner's jury – for them, well, Heaven only knew. Whereas now?

At this stage an impulse moved him, and opening a locked cabinet he took forth something, and as he examined it the associations of the thing, and the fast darkening room, brought back the vision of glooming rock walls and a perfectly defenceless man weighed down with horror and dread.

"May I come in, father? But you are in the dark."

It was Fay's voice. He half started, so rapt was he in his meditations.

"That's soon remedied," he said, striking a light. "Yes, come in, little one. You were asking about this thing once. Look at it – queer sort of weapon, isn't it?"

"It is, indeed," she answered. "Is it a Zulu war club? Why, the head is made of brass, or is it gold? And look, there is some strange writing on it."

"And the handle is a bone. Yes, the head is gold, and I put the thing together when I had no other weapon – ay – and used it, too, in the ghastliest kind of fight I ever was in. Come, now, we will put it away again."

"Not yet, father. Show me some more queer things," she pleaded, nestling to his side.

Then he got out other trophies and curios, and Fay spent a good hour of unalloyed delight turning them wonderingly over, and drinking in the incident, more or less stirring, which related to each.

But there was one thing he did not show her; one thing upon which no eye save his own might ever again rest; one thing he treasured up in the greatest security under lock and key, which was enshrined within his mind as a hallowed "charm," and that was the metal box and its contents – the "charm" which twice had stood between him and death – death violent and horrible – The Sign of the Spider.