leased from her hospital
work that she had finally been sent home to Cape Town. She had
seemed to be far from well, when she had left Johannesburg;
nevertheless, she had no sooner reached home than she had plunged
into the midst of the whirlpool of social life where she was said to
be the gayest of the gay.

Cape Town, that fall, was facing the end of the war and the
consequent departure of the swarm of young Englishmen who had made
their headquarters there during the past two years. Accordingly, it
resolved to make the most of the short time remaining to it; and the
early weeks of the year saw the little city neglecting all other
things for the sake of making merry with her fast-vanishing heroes.
And, in all the round of merry-making, Ethel Dent was in evidence,
bright and flashing as the diamonds that blazed on her shoulder, and
as soft. Her wit was ceaseless, her energy untiring. Always the
middle of a group, she yet always held herself within range of her
father's protection. He watched her proudly; yet his pride was
sometimes mingled with alarm, as he saw the waxy whiteness of her
ears and the dark shadows which lay beneath her eyes. It was plain
to him that all was not well with the girl; yet he was wholly at a
loss as to the cause of the trouble.

Strange to say, he never once thought of Weldon; neither did his
mind linger long upon the Captain. True, Ethel and Captain Frazer
had been good friends; but so had Ethel been good friends with many
another man. The secret of that last hour of the Captain's life was
buried in two hearts. Weldon could not speak of it; Ethel would not.
And so, in the eyes of her friends, Ethel's experience had been
sorrowful, but scarcely touched with tragedy. The heroic passing of
a casual friend is no cause for a lasting change in the nature of a
happy-tempered girl.

However, Alice had noted the change and, quite unable to account for
it, she had commented upon it to Carew. Her letter, coming that same
morning, had quickened his slow-forming resolution to speak. Taken
quite by itself, her account of Ethel would have made scant
impression upon him. Taken in connection with what he had seen of
Weldon, it forced him to draw certain conclusions which, though
wrong in detail, were comparatively accurate in their main outlines.

He and Weldon came back from their walk, wrapped in the silence of
perfect understanding. Carew had asked few questions; Weldon had
made even fewer replies, an