other kind were even more risky to carry than the nuggets and raw dust
that are hidden in the padded linings of the gold-smugglers' heavy
garments.

The lady, small, dark, stylishly-tailored, and with bright black,
bird-like eyes, was not a German drummer's widow when Van Busch and she
first met. She had chatted in her native English with her square, bulky,
sleek-looking fellow-passenger, well-dressed in grey linen drill
frock-coat and trousers, with blazing diamonds studding the bosom of his
well-starched shirt and linking his cuffs.

The wide felt hat he politely removed as he came into the carriage
revealed to Lady Hannah a tall, expansive, well-developed forehead. Below
the line of the hat-rim he was burned coffee-brown, like many another
British Colonial. The observant eye of "Gold Pen" took in the man's
vulgarly handsome features and curiously light eyes, and twinkled at the
flaring jewellery and the whiskers of obsolete Dundreary pattern that
stood out on either side the jewelled one's full, smooth chin. His large,
bold, over-red mouth, with the curling outward flange to it, gave her a
disagreeable impression. One would have been grateful for a beard that hid
that mouth.

Lady Hannah found it curiously disquieting until her fellow-traveller
began to talk, in a thick, lisping voice, with curiously candid and simple
intonations. He presented himself, and she accepted him at his own
valuation, as a British Johannesburger, and influential member of the
Chamber of Mines, possessing vast interests among the tall chimneys and
white dumping-heaps of the Rand.

Van Busch called his efforts to be ingratiating "sucking up to" the lady.
He sucked up, thinking at first she might be the wife of the English field
officer who had been ordered down from the north to take over the
Gueldersdorp command. Then he found she was only the grey mare of an
officer of the Staff....

She plied Van Busch in his triple character of politician, patriot, and
mine-owner with questions. Thought she was juicing a lot of information,
whereas Van Busch was the one who learned things. Kind of playing at being
newspaper-woman she was, and taking notes for London newspaper articles
all the time. Had laid out to be a little tin imitation of Dora Corr, or,
say, nickel-plated, with cast chasings. Was burning for an opening in the
diplomatic go-betweening line; wanted to dabble in War Correspondence, and
so on. But Van Busch gathered that the biggest