ot live
without you" to-day might be voting you a bore of the first water by
this time next year, or even earlier. Personally he had never felt
disposed to find fault with this development. It cut both ways, as
often as not in point of fact, his experience told him. But on one
occasion, long years ago, it had not. He had been hard hit, and the
process had left a bruise, a scar, not readily obliterated. Now,
however, applying the recollection of that case to this, he decided that
the symptoms were wanting. He was not in love with May, much as her
presence appealed to him, and yet the consciousness of what he knew his
presence meant to her afforded him a gratification he would not have
been human had he not experienced.

Preferentially, too, he was not inclined to embark in matrimony. He had
seen too much of it--too many instances of the weary humdrum chain thus
riveted, the welding together of two lives into a deteriorating round of
petty frictions which it furnished. But in this instance there was a
still greater and, to his mind, more fatal bar. With all the
advantages, the free and easy social code, and republican waiving of
social distinctions which colonial life afforded, the fact remained that
the Wenlocks were some little way from being his social equals. And he
was a great believer in birth and breeding. In which connection he
could not but admit to himself that the mere fact of the interruption by
Mrs Wenlock of their _tete-a-tete_ the other evening had jarred less
upon him than a something in her tone and speech when effecting it.
More uneasily still, he was constrained to admit that he had on certain
rare occasions detected manifestations of lack of breeding in May
herself, such indeed as he had never traced a sign of, at any time or
under any circumstances, in the De la Rey girls for instance, or in any
member of that family. And yet Stephanus de la Rey was "only a Boer."

At this juncture the sound of horse hoofs outside cut short his
meditations. The morning air was fresh and keen, and Aasvogel, a tall,
deep-shouldered iron-grey, having been stabled for some days, gave him
plenty to take care of when first mounted. But Colvin was fond of
riding, so presently, letting out the powerful animal for all he wanted
over the wide Karroo plains, a sense of keen joyous exhilaration
scattered all serious thought to the four winds of heaven.

Soon the plain was left behind, giving way to a steep, rugged