d, his
dropping, curtain-like moustache projected in a way that made keen
observers of the human face wonder what his mouth was like.

Gordon, who had been handling the paper with the tips of his finger, as
if it were something unclean, threw it down on the table again.

"Ye--es," he said slowly; "but it does not seem to dirty black hands as
it does white. They know no better."

"Lord!" ejaculated Durnovo. "Don't let us begin the old arguments all
over again. I thought we settled that the trade was there; we couldn't
prevent it, and therefore the best thing is to make hay while the sun
shines, and then clear out of the country."

"But suppose Meredith finds out?" reiterated Maurice Gordon, with a
lamentable hesitation that precedes loss.

"If Meredith finds out, it will be the worse for him."

A certain concentration of tone aroused Maurice Gordon's attention, and
he glanced uneasily at his companion.

"No one knows what goes on in the heart of Africa," said Durnovo darkly.
"But we will not trouble about that; Meredith won't find out."

"Where is he now?"

"With your sister, at the bungalow. A lady's man--that is what he is."

Victor Durnovo was smarting under a sense of injury which was
annoyingly indefinite. It was true that Jack Meredith had come at a very
unpropitious moment; but it was equally clear that the intrusion could
only have been the result of accident. It was really a case of the third
person who is no company, with aggravated symptoms. Durnovo had vaguely
felt in the presence of either a subtle possibility of sympathy between
Jocelyn Gordon and Jack Meredith. When he saw them together, for only a
few minutes as it happened, the sympathy rose up and buffeted him in
the face, and he hated Jack Meredith for it. He hated him for a certain
reposeful sense of capability which he had at first set down as conceit,
and later on had learnt to value as something innate in blood
and education which was not conceit. He hated him because his
gentlemanliness was so obvious that it showed up the flaws in other
men, as the masterpiece upon the wall shows up the weaknesses of the
surrounding pictures. But most of all he hated him because Jocelyn
Gordon seemed to have something in common with the son of Sir John
Meredith--a world above the head of even the most successful trader on
the coast--a world in which he, Victor Durnovo, could never live and
move at ease.

Beyond this, Victor Durnovo cherished the hatr