With reference to
Maurice, she explains frankly that if we marry she might, as she
puts it, 'continue to sit outside the hut,' but that in your case
you live 'in my head,' where she cannot come between you and me."

"Mad," I remarked, "quite mad. Still madness has to be dealt
with in this world like other things, and Nombe, being an
abnormal person, may suffer from abnormal ideas. It just amounts
to this; she has conceived a passionate devotion to you, at which
I am sure neither Maurice nor I can wonder."

"Are those the kind of compliments you used to pay in your youth,
Mr. Quatermain? I expect so, and now that you are old you cannot
stop them. Well, I thank you all the same, because perhaps you
mean what you say. But what is to be done about Nombe? Hush!
here she comes. I will leave you to reason with her, if you get
the chance," and she departed in a hurry.

Nombe arrived, and something in her aspect told me that I was
going to get the chance. Her eternal smile was almost gone and
her dark, beautiful eyes flashed ominously. Still she began by
asking in a mild voice whether the lady Heddana had eaten her
supper with appetite. It will be observed that she was not
interested in my appetite or whether enough was left for Anscombe
when he returned. I replied that so far as I noted she had
consumed about half a partridge, with other things.

"I am glad," said Nombe, "since I was not here to attend upon
her, having been summoned to speak with the Master."

Then she sat down and looked at me like a thunder storm.

"I nursed you when you were so ill, Macumazahn," she began, "but
now I learn that for the milk with which I fed you, you would
force me to drink bitter water that will poison me."

I replied I was well aware that without her nursing I should long
ago have been dead, which was what caused me to love her like my
own daughter. But would she kindly explain? This she did at
once.

"You have been plotting to take away from me the lady Heddana who
to me is as mother and sister and child. It is useless to lie to
me, for the Master has told me all; moreover, I knew it for
myself, both through my Spirit and because I had watched you."

"I have no intention of lying to you, Nombe, about this or any
other matter, though I think that sometimes in the past you have
lied to me. Tell me, do you expect the Inkosi Mauriti, the lady
Heddana and myself to pass the rest of our lives in the Black
Kloof, when