Beauvayse snatch it greedily from the grass and read the
glance that passed between the golden-hazel and the green-grey eyes, and
understood with a great pang of jealous mother-pain that she was no longer
first in her beloved's heart. Then came a throb of unselfish joy at the
knowledge that Richard's girl had come into her kingdom, that the divine
right and heritage and crown of Womanhood were hers at last.

Were hers? Not yet, but might be hers, if every clue that led back to that
tavern upon the veld could be broken or tangled in such wise that the
keenest and most subtle seeker should be baffled and lost. It all lay
clear before her now, the manipulation of events, the deft rearrangement
of actual fact that might best be used to this end. As her clear brain
planned, her bleeding heart trailed wings in the dust, seeking to lead the
searcher away from the hidden nest, and now her motherhood and her pride
and all the diplomacy acquired in her long years of rule rose up in arms
to meet him.

They were not of equal height. Her great, changeful eyes, purple-grey now,
dropped to encounter his. She regarded him quietly, and said:

"No one of your wide experience needs to be reminded that resemblances
between persons who are not allied by blood exist, and are strangely
misleading. But since you have conveyed to me in unmistakable terms your
conviction that Miss Mildare is the daughter of--a mutual friend who bore
that surname--is actually identified in your idea with that most unhappy
child who was left orphaned some seventeen years ago--at--I think you said
a veld hotel in the Orange Free State?"

He bowed assent, biting the short hairs of his moustache in vexation and
embarrassment.

"Hardly an hotel--a wretched shanty of the usual corrugated-iron and
mud-wall type, in the cattle-grazing country between Driepoort and
Kroonfontein. And--it seems my fate to be continually bringing our
conversation back to a--most unhappy and painful theme."

"I acquit you of the intention to pain or wound. When I have finished what
I have to say, we will revert to the subject no more. It will be buried
between us for ever, though the memory of the Dead live in our pardoning
and loving thoughts, and in our prayers."

The vivid colour that had flamed in her cheeks had sunk and left them
marble. The humid mist of tears that veiled her eyes gave them a wonderful
beauty.

He answered her:

"Your thoughts could not be otherwise than noble