made me feel more or
less a fool. In outward aspect she was rather tall, with an exceeding
gracefulness of carriage. Her face, if it lacked colour perhaps, was
very regular and refined; and would light up in the sweetest possible of
smiles. She had grey eyes, large and well-lashed, and her abundant hair
was arranged in some wonderful manner, which, while free from plaits and
coils, always looked far more becoming than any amount of dressing by a
fashionable hairdresser could have rendered it. But there you are.
What do I, a prosaic trader in the Zulu, for all my experience of border
and up-country matters, know about such things? So you must take my
plain impressions as I give them.

It seemed to me that Falkner Sewin's face had taken on an unpleasant,
not to say scowling expression, at his cousin's remarks, and he had
turned away to hide it. He was a personable young fellow enough, tall
and well set-up, and muscular; handsome too, with a square, determined
chin. He had been a few years in the Army, where he had much better
have remained, for he seemed to have qualified for civil life by a
superlative arrogance, and an overweening sense of his own importance;
both doubtless valuable to the accompaniment of jingling spurs and the
clank of scabbards, but worse than useless for farming purposes on the
Natal border. Towards myself he had begun by adopting a patronising
attitude, which, however, he had soon dropped.

The house was a single storied one, surrounded on three sides by a
verandah. A large and newly made garden reached round two sides of it,
and away, at the further end of this, I could see the residue of the
family, occupied with watering-pots, and other implements of the kind.
It was a bright and pleasant spot was this garden, and its colour and
sweet odours always conveyed a soothing effect, to my mind, at any rate;
for little time or inclination had I for the cultivation of mere
flowers. A patch or two of mealies or _amabele_, in a roughly
schoffeled-up "land" was about the extent of any "gardening" I allowed
myself; wherefore this amazing blend of colour and scent appealed to me
all the more.

"Take that chair, Mr Glanton," Miss Sewin went on, pointing to a large
cane chair on the verandah. "You must have had a hot ride. Falkner,
you might see that Mr Glanton's horse is looked after. Call one of the
boys and have him taken round and fed. The others are somewhere down in
the garden, Mr Glanton