she did not intend.

Then he would endeavour to reassure her and reiterate again and again
that nobody blamed her, which, of course, did not impose upon her, for
with the freemasonry existing among women Violet knew better; knew that
she was in fact the very one whom her hostess indeed did think the most
to blame. She must not hurry away from them like that, he would say.
Things would come right again--it was only a temporary misunderstanding,
and they would all be as jolly again together as before. And Violet in
her secret heart rejoiced--for any day might bring back her lover.
However great was her apparent anxiety to relieve them of her presence
it would not do to be hurried away just in time to miss him. That would
be too awful.

Her relief at the welcome reprieve would not, however, have been so
great had she been aware of a certain fact as to which she had been
designedly kept in ignorance. Selwood had written to Maurice, directing
the letter to the principal hotel of a town through which the treasure
seekers were bound to pass on their return. He had taken steps to
ensure its immediate delivery, or return to himself if not claimed
within a given period, and in it she asked Sellon not to come to
Sunningdale until he had had an interview with the writer--at any place
he, Sellon, might choose to appoint. No, assuredly, her equanimity
might have been a trifle disturbed had she known of that. So the days
went by.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

One afternoon she was indulging in a solitary stroll, according to her
recent habit. It was nearly sundown. She walked along absently, her
dress sweeping the crickets in chirruping showers from the long dank
herbage under the shade of the quince hedge. She crossed, the deserted
garden, and gained the rough wicket-gate opening out of it on the other
side. Down the narrow bridle-path, winding through the tangled brake
she moved, still absently as in a dream. And she was in a dream, for it
was down this path that they two had walked that first morning--ah! so
long ago now.

She stood upon the river bank, on the very spot where they had stood
together. The great peaks soaring aloft were all golden in the slanting
sunset. The shout and whistle of the Kaffir herds bringing in their
flocks sounded from the sunlit hillside, mellowed by distance. Doves
cooed softly in the thorn-brake--their voices mingling with the
fantast