y. Then Guy
Oscard spoke again.

"If she cooked the dinner," he said, "she knows her business."

"Yes," answered Durnovo, "she is a good cook--if she is nothing else."

It did not sound as if further inquiries would be welcome, and so the
subject was dropped with a silent tribute to the culinary powers of
Durnovo's housekeeper at the Msala Station.

The woman had only appeared for a moment, bringing in some dishes
for Joseph--a tall, stately woman, with great dark eyes, in which the
patience of motherhood had succeeded to the soft fire of West Indian
love and youth. She had the graceful, slow carriage of the Creole,
although her skin was darker than that of those dangerous sirens. That
Spanish blood ran in her veins could be seen by the intelligence of her
eyes; for there is an intelligence in Spanish eyes which stand apart.
In the men it seems to refer to the past or the future, for their
incorrigible leisureliness prevents the present rendering of a full
justice to their powers. In the women it belongs essentially to the
present; for there is no time like the present for love and other
things.

"They call me," she had said to Jack Meredith, in her soft, mumbled
English, a fortnight earlier, "they call me Marie."

The children he had named after his own phantasy, and when she had once
seen him with them there was a notable change in her manner. Her eyes
rested on him with a sort of wondering attention, and when she cooked
his meals or touched anything that was his there was something in her
attitude that denoted a special care.

Joseph called her "Missis," with a sort of friendliness in his voice,
which never rose to badinage nor descended to familiarity.

"Seems to me, missis," he said, on the third evening after the arrival
of the advance column, "that the guv'nor takes uncommon kindly to them
little 'uns of yours."

They were washing up together after dinner in that part of the garden
which was used for a scullery, and Joseph was enjoying a post-prandial
pipe.

"Yes," she said simply, following the direction of Joseph's glance. Jack
Meredith was engaged in teaching Epaminondas the intellectual game of
bowls with a rounded pebble and a beer-bottle. Nestorius, whose person
seemed more distended than usual, stood gravely by, engaged in dental
endeavours on a cork, while Xantippe joined noisily in the game. Their
lack of dress was essentially native to the country, while their mother
affected a simple Europ