e eventually decided was to
take the form of a bridge tournament followed by supper and a dance.

This sounds a simple enough affair, but, under Mrs. Hading's treatment,
it became rarefied. A chef for the supper had been commanded from
Johannesburg, a string orchestra for the dance from Salisbury, and
exquisite bridge prizes were being sent from a jeweller's at the Cape.
The hotel dining-room was to be transformed into a salon for the card
tournament, the lounge decorated as a ballroom, and an enormous marquee
erected for the supper.

The day dawned at last when, all these arrangements being completed,
there was nothing for the select council to do but congratulate each
other on the prospect of a perfect evening. Druro, however, who had
for some days been showing (to the initiated eyes of his male friends,
at least) signs of restlessness, not to say boredom, marred the harmony
of this propitious occasion by absenting himself, thereby causing the
president of the meeting palpable inquietude and displeasure. She
missed her laughing cavalier, as she had a fancy for calling him, from
her retinue. Plainly _distraite_, she sat twisting her jewelled
fingers and casting restless glances toward the door until certain
emissaries, who had been sent forth, returned with the news that no one
had seen Druro since eleven o'clock the night before, when he had gone
off in a car with some mining men. The widow hid her annoyance under a
pretty, petulant smile and the remark:

"He must be given a penance this afternoon." After which she abruptly
dismissed the audience until tea-time.

When tea-time came, however, with its gathering in Mrs. Hallett's
sitting-room (the lounge being in preparation for the evening's
festivities), there was still no Druro. Further inquiry had elicited
the fact that the men he had gone off with were from the Glendora. The
Glendora was a mine owned by an Australian syndicate and run entirely
by Australians, a hard-living, hard-drinking crowd, who, by reason of
their somewhat notorious ways and also because none of them had wives,
were left rather severely alone by the Wankelo community. One or two
of the managers, however, belonged to the club, and it was with these
that Druro had disappeared.

Mrs. Hading, whose petulance was not quite so pretty as in the morning,
rather gathered than was told these things, and she saw very plainly
that she had not gathered all there was to tell. Men have a curiou