to another stone to see if it was drier. At last he heard his
mistress' step, and they went into the house together. She lit a candle,
and walked to the Boer-woman's bedroom. On a nail under the lady in
pink hung the key of the wardrobe. She took it down and opened the great
press. From a little drawer she took fifty pounds (all she had in the
world), relocked the door, and turned to hang up the key. The marks
of tears were still on her face, but she smiled. Then she paused,
hesitated.

"Fifty pounds for a lover! A noble reward!" she said, and opened the
wardrobe and returned the notes to the drawer, where Em might find them.

Once in her own room, she arranged the few articles she intended to take
tomorrow, burnt her old letters, and then went back to the front room to
look at the time. There were two hours yet before she must call him. She
sat down at the dressing-table to wait, and leaned her elbows on it, and
buried her face in her hands. The glass reflected the little brown head
with its even parting, and the tiny hands on which it rested. "One day I
will love something utterly, and then I will be better," she said once.
Presently she looked up. The large, dark eyes from the glass looked back
at her. She looked deep into them.

"We are all alone, you and I," she whispered; "no one helps us, no one
understands us; but we will help ourselves." The eyes looked back at
her. There was a world of assurance in their still depths. So they had
looked at her ever since she could remember, when it was but a small
child's face above a blue pinafore. "We shall never be quite alone, you
and I," she said; "we shall always be together, as we were when we were
little."

The beautiful eyes looked into the depths of her soul.

"We are not afraid; we will help ourselves!" she said. She stretched
out her hand and pressed it over them on the glass. "Dear eyes! we will
never be quite alone till they part us--till then!"

Chapter 2.X. Gregory Rose Has An Idea.

Gregory Rose was in the loft putting it neat. Outside the rain poured; a
six months' drought had broken, and the thirsty plain was drenched with
water. What it could not swallow ran off in mad rivulets to the great
sloot, that now foamed like an angry river across the flat. Even the
little furrow between the farmhouse and the kraals was now a stream,
knee-deep, which almost bore away the Kaffer women who crossed it. It
had rained for twenty-four hours, and still the rain