nt to pieces--to hear her hysterical laughter and foolish
remarks.

"For goodness' sake have the courage of your sins! Show some blood!"
was the rebuke April longed to administer together with a sound
shaking. But anger was futile, and rebuke out of the question. The
only wise thing was to retreat in as good order as possible to the
cabin of which Diana now enjoyed sole possession, and there reconsider
the position.

"I can't bear it," she whimpered desperately. "I can't stand another
two days of it. I tell you I shall go mad."

"Nonsense!" April responded, with a cheerfulness that found no echo in
her heart. "You must take a pull on yourself, Diana. As you said last
night, you owe these women nothing, and will probably never see them
again."

But Diana's lay had changed tune.

"Oh! Won't I? . . . I feel they will haunt me all my days. What is
that couplet?--

"He who hath a thousand friends hath not a friend to spare;
But he who hath one enemy shall meet him everywhere."

A man said to me yesterday that what is done on the voyage to the Cape
is known at Cairo within a week if it is sufficiently scandalous." She
wept.

"A blue look-out for me!" thought her listener, dismally imagining the
name of April Poole flashing from one end of the great continent to
another. Not only at the Cape would she be debarred from earning her
living! This impression was confirmed by some of the remarks women
made to her later in the day. They were all quite willing to be
friendly as long as she was not in the company of the black sheep.

"She might just as well take ship back to England," one said. "No one
will employ her as a governess after this. The story will be all over
Cape Town within an hour of our arrival."

"You can't live these things down in Africa," said another. "Of
course, she might get a job up-country, where people are not particular
and only want a kind of servant to look after their children."

It was no use April protesting against the cruelty of condemning a girl
for ever because of one indiscretion. Her listeners only looked at her
suspiciously. One old Englishwoman, who had lived many years in South
Africa, put the case more cynically than kindly:

"Girls who earn their living are not allowed the luxury of
indiscretion. If it had been _you_, now----"

"Do you mean that I should have been forgiven by reason of my position?"

"My dear," was the dry reply, "it is the same old sno