an; but that it should ever
have been needed on Nidia's own account--oh, Heavens! the idea was
ghastly, if it were not so incredible Nidia, who had renounced airily
the most alluring possibilities more than once, now to throw herself
away upon a mere nobody! Nidia, who had never taken any of them
seriously in her life, to succumb in this fashion! No, it could not be
allowed. It could be nothing but the result of propinquity, and danger
mutually shared. She must be saved from this at all costs. And then
the good woman recognised uneasily that John Ames would be rather a
difficult person to defeat, once he had made up his mind to opposition.
Ah! but she had one card to play, one weapon wherewith to deal a blow to
which one of his mould would be peculiarly vulnerable.

The while she watched Nidia closely. But for the discovery she had
made, she would have rejoiced to see her darling so completely her old
self, all brightness and animation as she chatted away with the two
visitors; now that very gladsomeness was as a poisoned and rankling dart
to the dismayed observer, for it confirmed all her direst suspicions.
Susie Bateman's Christianity was about on a par with that of the average
British female, in that she would have looked sourly askance at anybody
who should refuse to attend church, yet just then she would have given a
great deal to learn that Tarrant's report was erroneous, and that John
Ames was at that moment lying among the granite wilds of the Matopos, as
lifeless as the granite itself, with half a dozen Matabele assegais
through him.

Such aspirations, however, were as futile as they usually are, and the
best proof of the truth of Tarrant's story lay in the real objective
presence of the subject thereof; for hardly had the two men departed
when they were replaced by a third--even John Ames him-self.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

THE PACKET MARKED "B."

With her usual frank naturalness and absence of conventionality, Nidia
went to meet him in the doorway. Then, as he took her extended hands,
it seemed as though he were going to hold them for ever. Yet no word
had passed between them.

How well he looked! she was thinking. The light, not unpicturesque
attire there prevailing, and so becoming to a good-looking, well-made
man, suited him, she decided. She had first seen him in the ordinary
garments of urban civilisation. She had seen him last a tattered
fugitive, haggard and unshaven. Now the up-coun