to meet with equanimity the calm, clear glance she sent through him.

"Don't you know the little riding girl?" asked Mrs. Hading softly, but
something in Druro's surprised expression made her cover the question
with a faintly admiring remark: "She's quite good-looking, I think.
Who is she?"

"The daughter of an old friend of mine--a Colonel Liscannon," said
Druro, speaking in a low voice and rapidly. He would have preferred
not to discuss Gay at all, but his natural generosity impelled him to
accord her such dignity and place as belonged to her and not to leave
her where Mrs. Hading's words seemed to place her--just the other side
of some fine, invisible line.

"Ah, one of the early pioneers? They were all by way of being captains
and colonels, weren't they?" murmured Marice Hading, still weaving
fine, invisible threads.

Druro frowned slightly. "Colonel Liscannon is an old service-man----"

"May I beg for one of those delicious cigarettes you were smoking after
lunch?" she said languidly. "And do tell where to get some like them.
I find it so difficult to get anything at all smokable up here, except
from your clubs."

Thus, Colonel Liscannon and his daughter were gracefully consigned to
the limbo of subjects not sufficiently interesting to hold the
attention of Mrs. Hading. If she could not, by reason of Druro's
natural chivalry, put Gay just over the wrong side of some subtle
social line she had drawn, she could, at least, thrust her out of the
conversation altogether and out of Druro's mind. This was always a
pastime she found fascinating--pushing someone out of a man's mind and
taking the empty place herself--and one at which long practice had made
her nearly perfect. So it is not astonishing that she succeeded so
well with Druro that, when Gay left her friends and slipped out to her
waiting horse, he did not even notice her going. He was busy trying to
persuade Mrs. Hading to come for a spin around the Wankelo kopje in his
car, and he was not unsuccessful. Only, they went further than the
kopje. About six miles out they got a glimpse of a solitary rider
ahead, going like the wind. A cloud of soft, ashen dust rising from
under the horse's heels floated back and settled like the gentle dew
from heaven upon the car and its occupants. Druro was on the point of
slackening speed, but Mrs. Hading's pencilled brows met in a line above
her eyes, and one of her little white teeth showed in her underlip.