arm" became
"Rose Manor" in remembrance of the ancestral domain, and the claim of
the Roses to noble blood was established--in their own minds at least.

Gregory took up one of the white, crested sheets; but on deeper
reflection he determined to take a pink one, as more suitable to the
state of his feelings. He began:

"Kopje Alone,

"Monday afternoon.

"My Dear Jemima--"

Then he looked up into the little glass opposite. It was a youthful face
reflected there, with curling brown beard and hair; but in the dark blue
eyes there was a look of languid longing that touched him. He re-dipped
his pen and wrote:

"When I look up into the little glass that hangs opposite me, I wonder
if that changed and sad face--"

Here he sat still and reflected. It sounded almost as if he might be
conceited or unmanly to be looking at his own face in the glass. No,
that would not do. So he looked for another pink sheet and began again.

"Kopje Alone, "Monday afternoon.

"Dear Sister,--It is hardly six months since I left you to come to this
spot, yet could you now see me I know what you would say, I know what
mother would say--'Can that be our Greg--that thing with the strange
look in his eyes?'

"Yes, Jemima, it is your Greg, and the change has been coming over me
ever since I came here; but it is greatest since yesterday. You know
what sorrows I have passed through, Jemima; how unjustly I was always
treated at school, the masters keeping me back and calling me a
blockhead, though, as they themselves allowed, I had the best memory of
any boy in the school, and could repeat whole books from beginning to
end. You know how cruelly father always used me, calling me a noodle and
a milksop, just because he couldn't understand my fine nature. You know
how he has made a farmer of me instead of a minister, as I ought to have
been; you know it all, Jemima; and how I have borne it all, not as a
woman, who whines for every touch, but as a man should--in silence.

"But there are things, there is a thing, which the soul longs to pour
forth into a kindred ear.

"Dear sister, have you ever known what it is to keep wanting and wanting
and wanting to kiss some one's mouth, and you may not; to touch some
one's hand, and you cannot? I am in love, Jemima.

"The old Dutchwoman from whom I hire this place has a little
stepdaughter, and her name begins with 'E'.

"She is English. I do not know how her father came to marry a
Boer-woman. It makes