ountry?
to lay hold--without intending it, as it were, and by the left hand--oh
high distinction? Were women, on the whole, bad judges of young men? She
recalled a saying of Dr. Roughsedge, that "mothers never know how clever
their sons are." Perhaps the blindness extends to other eyes
than mothers?

Meanwhile, she got from him all the news she could. He had been, it
seemed, concerned in the vast operation of bringing a new African Empire
into being. She listened, dazzled, while in the very simplest, baldest
phrases he described the curbing of slave-raiders, the winning of
populations, the grappling with the desert, the opening out of river
highways, whereof in his seven months he had been the fascinated
beholder. As to his own exploits, he was ingeniously silent; but she
knew them already. A military expedition against two revolted and
slave-raiding emirs, holding strong positions on the great river; a few
officers borrowed from home to stiffen a local militia; hot fighting
against great odds; half a million of men released from a reign of
hell; tyranny broken, and the British _pax_ extended over regions a
third as large as India--smiling prosperity within its pale, bestial
devastation and cruelty without--these things she knew, or had been able
to imagine from the newspapers. According to him, it had been all the
doing of other men. She knew better; but soon found it of no use to
interrupt him.

Meanwhile she dared not ask him why he had come home. The campaign,
indeed, was over; but he had been offered, it appeared, an
administrative appointment.

"And you mean to go back?"

"Perhaps." He colored and looked restlessly out of the window.

Mrs. Colwood understood the look, and felt it was, indeed, hard upon
him that he must put up with her so long. In reality, he too was
conscious of new pleasure in an old acquaintance. He had forgotten
what a dear little thing she was: how prettily round-faced, yet
delicate--ethereal--in all her proportions, with the kindest eyes. She
too had grown--by the mere contact with Diana's fate. Within her tiny
frame the soul of her had risen to maternal heights, embracing and
sustaining Diana.

He would have given the world to question her. But after her first
answer to his first inquiry he had fallen tongue-tied on the subject of
Diana, and Nigeria had absorbed conversation. She, on her side, wished
him to know many things, but did not see how to begin upon them.

At last she atte