The Project Gutenberg EBook of Renshaw Fanning's Quest, by Bertram Mitford

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Title: Renshaw Fanning's Quest
A Tale of the High Veldt

Author: Bertram Mitford

Illustrator: Stanley L. Wood

Release Date: June 20, 2010 [EBook #32919]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENSHAW FANNING'S QUEST ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Renshaw Fanning's Quest, by Bertram Mitford.

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RENSHAW FANNING'S QUEST, BY BERTRAM MITFORD.

PROLOGUE.

"Just consider! You would soon get to hate me. I should be the ruin of
you."

Thus the owner of the bright, sparkling face which was turned, half
mockingly, half ruefully, upon that of her companion. Looking out
killingly from under the broad-brimmed hat, the dark, lustrous eyes
seemed to melt into his.

"How can you say such a thing?" was the reply, in the deep,
half-tremulous tone of a man who is in dead earnest. "How can you say
such a thing?" he repeated involuntarily, driving a spur into his
horse's flank with a dig that made that spirited animal curvet and
prance beneath the restraining curb.

"Oh, take care! you are making my horse restive. And I am such a bad
rider, as you know!" And the lithe, graceful figure in the well-fitting
habit was thrown into the relief involved by a real physical effort.
"How can I say so?" she went on; "how can I say so? Why, it is only
candid on my part. Do you seriously think a butterfly like me is cut
out for a life on the High Veldt?"

The man's bronzed features faded to a ghastly paleness. He averted his
head for some moments, as though with a wild instinctive idea of
breaking the spell that was upon him. Overhead towered the stately cone
of a great mountain, soaring aloft in the summer haze. Around, in
undulating sweep, the bushclad slopes shut in the tortuous, stony road.
Birds piped and called to one another in the lustrous sunlight, and the
rich sensuous air was alive with the drowsy boom of bees and the
metallic plash of the river in it