nd he bent
forward to kiss her.

She lifted her face towards him, then suddenly changed her mind, and
laid her hand upon his breast.

"You forget," she said almost solemnly, "you are going to marry Bessie."

Crushed by a deep sense of shame, and by a knowledge of the calamity
that had overtaken him, John turned and limped from the house.

CHAPTER XVIII

AND AFTER

In front of the door of "The Palatial" was a garden-bed filled with
weeds and flowers mixed up together like the good and evil in the
heart of a man, and to the right-hand side of this bed stood an old and
backless wooden chair. No sooner had John limped outside the door of
the cottage than he became sensible that, what between one thing and
another--weariness, loss of blood from his wound, and intense mental
emotion--if he did not sit down somewhere quickly, he should follow the
example set by Jess and faint away. Accordingly he steered for the old
chair and sank into it with gratitude. Presently he saw Mrs. Neville
running up the path with a bottle of brandy in her hand.

"Ah!" he thought to himself, "that will just come in handy for me. If
I don't have a glass of brandy soon I shall roll off this infernal
chair--I am sure of it."

"Where is Jess?" panted Mrs. Neville.

"In there," he said; "she has recovered. It would have been better for
us both if she hadn't," he added to himself.

"Why, bless me, Captain Niel, how queer you look!" said Mrs. Neville,
fanning herself with her hat; "and there is such a row going on at the
camp there; the volunteers swear that they will attack the military
for deserting them, and I don't know what all; and they simply wouldn't
believe me when I said you were not shot. Why, I never! Look! your boot
is full of blood! So you were hit after all."

"Might I trouble you to give me some brandy, Mrs. Neville?" said John
faintly.

She filled a glass she had brought with her half full of water from
a little irrigation furrow that ran down from the main _sluit_ by the
road, and then topped it up with brandy. He drank it, and felt decidedly
better.

"Dear me!" said Mrs. Neville, "there are a pair of you now. You should
just have seen that girl go down when she saw the body coming along the
road! I made sure that it was you; but it wasn't. They say that it was
poor Jim Smith, son of old Smith of Rustenburg. I tell you what it is,
Captain Niel, you had better be careful; if that girl isn't in love with
you she is som