When--when?"

He crushed the question on her lips with kisses and whisperings.

Christine Chaine stole back from whence she came, with the strange and
terrible sensation that her heart was being crushed between iron
fingers and was bleeding slowly, drop by drop, to death. Once more,
life had played her false. Love had mocked her and passed by on the
other side.

Some of the men wondered, next day, how they could have had the
illusion that Miss Chaine was a beautiful girl. The two Hollanders,
who were great friends, discussed the matter after lunch while they
were clipping feathers from the ostriches. One thing was quite clear
to them both: she was just one of those cold Englishwomen without a
drop in her veins of the warmth and sparkle that a man likes in a
woman. Mrs. van Cannan now--she was the one! Still, it was a funny
thing how they should have been taken in over Miss Chaine. Someone
else had been taken in, too, however, and with a vengeance--that fellow
Saltire, with his "sidey" manners. _He_ had got a cold douche, if you
like, at the hands of the proud one. They had all witnessed it. Thus
and thus went the Dutchmen's remarks and speculations, and they
chuckled with the malice of schoolboys over the discomfiture of
Saltire. For it was well known to them and to the other men that the
Englishman had ridden off, in the cool hours of the dawn, to Farnie
Marais' place about ten miles away, to get her some flowers. He wanted
to borrow an instrument, he said, but it was funny he should choose to
go to Marais', who was more famous for the lovely roses he grew for the
market than for any knowledge of scientific instruments. Funny, too,
that all he had been seen to bring back was a bunch of yellow roses
that must have cost him a stiff penny, for old Farnie did not grow
roses for fun.

No one had seen Saltire present the roses (that must have happened in
the dining-room before the others came in); but all had marked the
careless indifference with which they were scattered on the table and
spilled on the floor beside the governess's chair. She looked on
calmly, too, while the little girls, treating them like daisies, pulled
several to pieces, petal by petal. Only the boy Roderick had appeared
to attach any worth to them. He rescued some from under the table, and
was overheard to ask ardently if he might have three for his own. The
answer that he might have them all if he liked was not missed by any
one