n partial to him.

Propinquity--that is, opportunity--has much to answer for. They had
been thrown together a great deal, for have we not said that he had
spent some time with the Wenlocks while looking about for a farm of his
own? Moreover, he had come there handicapped by a kind of spurious
heroic glamour, in that he was supposed to have saved Frank's life on
one occasion in the Matopo Hills, what time they were hotly pressed by
the Matabele, and that rash youth had chosen to hang back when he should
have been retiring with the column. He had collected half a dozen
volunteers and brought him out just in time. To his own mind it had
been all in the day's work, but others had seen fit to make a great deal
more of it than it seemed to deserve. Of course the girl had begun by
making a sort of hero of him. Again, he himself personally was the kind
of man that women take to--cultured, travelled, well-bred, and full of
_savoir vivre_. It would have been strange if, considering the life the
girl led, the few men she saw, of her own nationality at least--for
although several of the young Dutch men around were both well-looking
and well educated, she could not take to them--she should come to think
a great deal of her brother's friend, and their only English neighbour.
Hence the intimacy that had grown and ripened between them.

Now he sat there thinking everything out. How near he had been only the
evening before last to asking her to share his life! A fraction of a
moment more would have done it, but for the interruption--timely or
otherwise. Which was it? He loved her--how indeed could he help doing
so, when in addition to all her attractions she was always so sweet and
lovable to him? But he was not _in love_ with her. He had passed the
age for "falling in love;" had reached that wherein men become
wholesomely critical. May Wenlock _as_ May Wenlock was one
personality--and a very charming and alluring personality at that May
Wenlock with a proprietary interest, and a legally signed and sealed
vested right in himself, was another. He had not been slow to descry in
her a very strong spice of natural temper and wilfulness; and although
now her demeanour towards himself was invariably sweet and winning,
would it always be so? And this was a side of the picture which did not
allure.

Propinquity! He had seen repeated instances, of the results of this,
had even experienced some. The girl or, woman who "could n