sister's: she had done
so of her own will, and at times not unnaturally she was regretful.
Self-denial is a stern-faced angel. If only we hold him fast and wrestle
with him long enough he will speak us soft words of happy sound, just
as, if we wait long enough in the darkness of the night, stars will come
to share our loneliness. Still this is one of those things that Time
hides from us and only reveals at his own pleasure; and, so far as Jess
was concerned, his pleasure was not yet. Outwardly, however, she showed
no sign of her distress and of the passion which was eating at her
heart. She was pale and silent, it is true, but then she had always been
remarkable for her pallor and silence. Only she gave up her singing.

So the weeks passed very drearily for the poor girl, who was doing what
other people did--eating and drinking, riding, and going to parties like
the rest of the Pretoria world, till at last she began to think that
she had better be returning home again, lest she should wear out her
welcome. And yet she dreaded to do so, mindful of her daily prayer to be
delivered from temptation. As to what was happening at Mooifontein she
was in almost complete ignorance. Bessie wrote to her, of course, and so
did her uncle once or twice, but they did not tell her much of what she
wanted to know. Bessie's letters were, it is true, full of allusions
to what Captain Niel was doing, but she did not go beyond that. Her
reticence, however, told her observant sister more than her words. Why
was she so reticent? No doubt because things still hung in the balance.
Then Jess would think of what it all meant for her, and now and again
give way to an outburst of passionate jealousy which would have been
painful enough to witness if anybody had been there to see it.

Thus the time went on towards Christmas, for Jess, having been warmly
pressed to do so, had settled to stay over Christmas and return to the
farm with the new year. There had been a great deal of talk in the town
about the Boers, but she was too much preoccupied with her own affairs
to pay much attention to it. Nor, indeed, was the public mind greatly
moved; they were so much accustomed to Boer scares at Pretoria, and
hitherto these had invariably ended in smoke. But all of a sudden,
on the morning of the eighteenth of December, came the news of the
proclamation of the Republic. The town was thrown into a ferment, and
there arose a talk of going into laager, so that, an