, and pair off, lose ourselves by accident, and all that sort
of thing. But mind, I can't go on talking to you day after day, only as
one of a crowd. I can't stand it. We must manage somehow."

"Do you think I am a bit less anxious to than you? But, Maurice
darling, do mind what I'm going to say. You must be on your guard
before people, you always were such an awful old blunderer. You mustn't
go letting slip any `Violets,' for instance, and you're quite as likely
to as not."

"I'm not going to let one slip at the present moment, anyway," he
replied with a laugh. "And so you thought you were never going to see
me again?"

"Ah, I have sometimes feared so. The agonies I have gone through! I
know what you are going to say--that it was my own doing. I did it to
test you, Maurice. Six months is not a long time, but ah, I have at
times thought I should die long before it was over! Day after day, week
after week, no news, not a word from you, or even of you. And every one
here thinks I am utterly heartless. I never try to undeceive them; in
fact, I rather encourage them in the idea."

No one would have thought so could they but have seen her there that
morning, slowly wending through the mimosa brake encircled by her
lover's arm; for they had left the somewhat precarious refuge of the
garden. The restless, eager face, the quick, passionate tones, as
though she were talking against time, and grudged every one of the too
swiftly flying moments which were bringing this doubly sweet, because
surreptitious, interview to its end.

They had reached the river-bank. The cool water bubbling along beneath
the shade of the trees, the varying call of birds in the brake, the
chirruping tree-crickets, the hum of bees dipping into the creamy cups
of snow-white arums which grew in the moist shade, the melodious shout
of the hoopoe echoing from the black kloofs that rent the mountain
side--all made an appropriate framework, a fitting accompaniment of
harmonious sounds to this sweet stolen interview. High overhead the
hoary crest of a great mountain frowned down from the dazzling blue.

"You haven't told me yet how you managed to find me out," said Violet at
length, after a good deal of talk that we feel under no special
necessity to reproduce, because, given the circumstances, the reader
should have no difficulty in guessing its nature.

"Oh, that was the most astonishing piece of luck that ever came about,"
he answered.