satisfaction the recently expressed
decision of the two as to taking up their quarters there for a time.

"You ought to remain here a few days, and show us about, Mr Moseley,"
said the elder of the two ladies, after some more desultory
conversation.

"Wish I could, Mrs Bateman. No such luck, though. I've got to start
for Bulawayo to-night. They are hurrying the soul out of me as it is."

"Isn't the journey a frightful one?" asked Nidia.

"It isn't a delightful one," laughed the man, who was just a fair
average specimen of the well-bred Englishman, of good height, well set
up, and well groomed. "Railway to Mafeking, then eight days' coaching;
and they tell me the coach is always crammed full. Pleasant, isn't it?"

The stranger looked up quickly as though about to say something, but
thought better of it. Nidia rejoined--

"What in the world will we do when our time comes?"

"I am afraid you must make up your minds to some discomforts," replied
Moseley. "One of the conditions of life in a new country, you know.
But people are very decent in those parts, and I'm sure would do
everything they could to assist you."

A little more conversation, and, lunch being over, the trio withdrew.
John Ames, left alone at the table, was lost in all sorts of wild
imaginings. Something seemed to have altered within him, and that owing
to the proximity of this girl, a perfect stranger, whom three quarters
of an hour ago he had never set eyes on. It was really very absurd, he
told himself. But when a man has had fever, he is bound to be liable to
fall a victim to any kind of absurdity. Fever! that was it--so he told
himself.

Now, as he sat there, dreamily cracking almonds, he began to regret his
reticence. The very turn of the conversation favoured him. He might
have volunteered considerable information for the benefit of the man who
was going up-country, he suspected, for the first time. The
conversation would have become general, and might have paved the way to
an acquaintanceship. There was no necessity for him to have been so
reticent. He had lived too long stowed away, he decided. It was high
time he came out of his shell.

He had applied for and obtained his leave, and had come down there to
spend it. The sea breezes blowing across the isthmus of the Cape
Peninsula, the cool leafiness of the lovely suburbs, were as a very
tonic after the hot, steamy, tropical glow of his remote home. But the
effects of t