ening she said to him anxiously, after again discussing the
news, "Mrs. Fleetwood has often asked me to visit her in Salisbury.
Shall I go now? Perhaps if I could get Major Carew to talk?..."

"You will never get him to talk," with quiet conviction.

"Nevertheless, my husband, I feel I must try. We have so much, you and
I. One can but make the effort."

She got up from her chair and went round to him, and climbed on to his
knee and hid her face, because she was troubled and unhappy.

"Tell me something I can do to help them, Billy?" she pleaded.

He fondled her hair in silence a moment, and then, because he thought
it might comfort her afterwards to know she had tried, he said, "There
is no harm in your going to Mrs. Fleetwood's. I think the change would
do you good."

And Ailsa went to bed a little comforted that at least he sanctioned
her journey.

XXV

AILSA LEARNS CAREW'S SECRET

Ailsa had to journey to Selukwe in the post-cart, and she found it
very trying; all the more so because her tender heart, which loved all
animals, suffered agonies of compassion for the poor underfed,
overworked mules, some with sores, urged pitilessly along by their
black driver. She wished vainly that she was the happy possessor of a
fortune, and might at once finance in Rhodesia the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, for which funds are so urgently
needed. At Selukwe she had some little time to wait at the hotel
before taking the train, and she went round to the posting-stables to
interview any white man she could find who might be in a responsible
position towards the post-cart mules on the subject of their
condition. The man, of course, complained of the roads, which were in
a hopeless condition, and beyond satisfying in a measure her own sense
of compassion, she knew she had done little good. But while she talked
to the white man at the stables, a thin, scholarly looking,
grey-haired gentleman chanced to overhear their discourse, and raising
his hat to her with grave courtesy, expressed his admiration of her
action.

"But can nothing be done, do you think?" she asked him dolefully.

"I'm afraid not. You see, the Government do not particularly wish that
route used, and so they have allowed the road to lapse. Let us hope
there will very shortly be a railway, at any rate, to Edwardstown, and
that then visitors will be encouraged to go and see your wonderful
Zimbabwe ruins, instead of discouraged by th