air of one who has suffered boredom from the too
frequent enumeration of this conjecture. "Not knowing, can't say." And
there is another silence.

"How she got the maggot into her head," presently resumes Lady Hannah's
spouse, "I can't think. I did suppose her vaultin' ambition to rival Dora
Corr--woman who managed to burn her own and a lot of other people's
fingers by meddlin' in South African politics over the Raid business--had
been quenched for good that mornin' you took those fifty chaps of the
Irregulars out for what she _would_ call their 'baptism of fire.'"

"That's newspaperese," yawns Beauvayse, his supple brown hands knitted at
the back of his sleek golden head. "Goes with 'the tented field' and
_casus belli: cherchez la femme_ and _cui bono_?"

"She's got the lingo at her finger-ends and in her blood, or we wouldn't
be cherchaying now," says Bingo dolorously. "I asked her if she was
particularly keen on gettin' killed...."

"Shouldn't have done that. Put her on her mettle not to show funk if she
felt it," mumbles Beauvayse.

"A man can't always be diplomatic," grumbles Bingo. "Anyhow, she'd seen a
bit of a scrap at the outset of affairs, when the B.S.A. went out with the
Armoured Train, and was wild with me for wantin' to deprive her of another
'glorious experience.' ... And next morning she rides out with a Corporal
and two troopers, both chaps beastly sensible of their responsibility, and
wishin' her at Cape Town, she in toppin' spirits and as keen as mustard.
It was about six o'clock, morning, and she hadn't been gone five minutes
before we heard you fellows poundin' away and bein' pounded at like Jimmy
O! I was on the roof with the Chief, the sweat runnin' down into the
binoculars, until the veld seemed swarmin' with brown mares and grey linen
habits and drab smasher hats, with my wife's head under 'em, and hoverin'
troopers. But I did make out that your party had got into
difficulties----"

"We opened on 'em at a thousand yards, and pushed to within five hundred,
and if the fellows in charge of the Hotchkiss could have got her into
play," Beauvayse interrupts rather huffily, "we'd have been as right as
rain."

"Possibly. If I hadn't been on special duty that day, and as nervous as a
cat in a thunderstorm, I'd have volunteered to bring No. 2 Troop of A out
to the rescue, instead of Heseltine. As it was, I nearly fell off the roof
when I saw my wife coming, one trooper, as pale with fright as a pie