"Dear Druro, it is very sad for him!" said she complacently, and presently added, "but I shall always see that he is taken care of."

Something in Tryon shuddered, but outwardly he gave no sign, only looked at her commiseratingly.

"It is that we are thinking of—Guthrie and I. Are you strong enough physically and well-enough off financially to undertake such a burden?" She regarded him piercingly, a startled look in her eyes. "Doubtless you are a rich women—and, of course, no one could doubt your generosity. Still, a blind man without means of his own——"

"What?" She fired the word at him like a pistol-shot.

"He does not know," said Tryon softly. "We are keeping it dark for some days yet. The two shocks together might——" He paused.

"What—what?" she panted at him, like a runner at the end of his last lap.

"The mine is no good. They are dropping back into it every penny they ever made, and the reef has pinched out. Guthrie told me this tonight on his oath." The woman gave a long, sighing breath and lay back painfully in her chair. But Tryon had a cruel streak in him. He would not let her rest. "He is a ruined man, and may be a blind man, but, thank God, he has you to lean on!"

"You are mad!" said she, and burst into a harsh laugh. Tryon's face was full of grave concern as he rose.

"Shall I send your nurse?"

She pulled herself together sharply.

"Yes, yes; send her—but, before you go, promise me, Mr. Tryon, never to let Druro know you told me."

("Is it possible that she has so much grace in her?" he pondered.)

"Never!" he promised solemnly. "He shall find out the greatness of your love for himself."

Like fate, Tryon knew where to rub in the salt. As he went down the veranda, he heard the same harsh, cruel laugh ringing out, somewhat like the laugh of a hyena that has missed its prey.

After Sir Charles had gone, Druro sat for a while silent, elbows on the table, thinking. He had insisted upon getting up as usual, though they had tried to keep him in bed. He was not going to take it lying down, he said. So now he sat there, alone, except for Toby, who sat on his knee and, from time to time, put out a little red tongue and gently licked his master's ear.

The nurses who came softly in to congratulate him slipped away softlier still, without speaking. They could understand what it meant to him to know that he would see the sunshine again, the rose and primrose dawns, the great purple shadows of night flung across the veld. What they did not know was that, in spirit, he was looking his last on the land he loved and seeing down a vista of long years greyer than the veld on the greyest day of winter. His lips were firmly closed, but they wore a bluish tinge as he sat there, for he was tasting life colder than ice and drier than the dust of the desert between his teeth; and the serpent of remorse and regret was at his heart.

But not for long. Presently he rose and squared his shoulders, like a man settling his burden for a long march, and said quickly to himself some words he had once read, he knew not where.

"'A man shall endure such things as the stern women drew off the spindles for him at his birth.'"

His nurse, who had been waiting in the veranda, hearing his voice, now came in and greeted him gaily. "Hooray, Mr. Druro! Oh, you don't know how glad we all are! And the whole town has been here to wish you luck and joy on the news. But Sir Charles made us drive them all away. He says you may see no more than two people before you have lunched and rested, and he has selected the two himself."

"What cheek!" said Druro. "And what a nice soft hand you've got, nurse!"

"Be off with you now!" laughed the trim Irish nurse. "And how can I read you the letter I have for you with one hand?"

"Try it wid wan eye instid," said he, putting on a brogue to match her own. She laughed and escaped, and, later, read the letter, at his wish.

LUNDI DEAR:

I grieve to hurt you, but it is no use pretending. I can never live in this atrocious Africa, and I feel it would be cruel to tear you away from a country you love so much. Besides, after deep consideration, I find that my darling husband's memory is dearer to me than any living man can be. Forgive me—and farewell.

MARICE.

"She left by the morning's train," said the nurse. "You know she has been well enough to go for more than a week."

As Lundi did not answer, she went away and left him once more sitting very still. But with what a different stillness! The whole world smelled sweet in his nostrils and spoke of freedom. His blood chanted a paean of praise and hope to the sun and moon and stars. An old cry of the open surged in him.

"Life is sweet, brother! There is day and night, brother, both sweet things, sun, moon, and stars, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath!"

The voice of Tryon broke in on his communings.

"How do you feel, old man?"

"That you, Dick?" Druro stooped down and felt for Toby once more. "I feel inclined to run out into the street and throw my hat into the air, and yell out that I'll fight any one, play poker against any one, and match my girl and my dog against all comers."

"Indeed! Then I'll leave you, for you're certainly suffering from a dangerous swagger in the blood."

Tryon's smile had more than a tinge of sadness in it as he turned to go. This action of his was one of those that smell sweet and blossom in the dust, but, as yet, he was too near it to savour much more than its bitterness. The path is narrow and the gate is straight for those who serve faithfully at Love's high altar. As he went from the room, he looked with tender eyes at the flower-like girl who had come in with him and stood now with smiling lips and eyes full of tears looking at the man and the dog.

"You ought to give him a lecture, Gay. It isn't good for a man to be so puffed up with pride."

"Gay!" said Druro, standing up and letting Toby down with a rush.

"Yes, Lundi. Dick fetched me. I had to come and tell you how glad——"

She slid a hand into his, and he drew her into his arms and began to kiss her with those slow, still-lipped kisses that have all the meaning of life and love behind them.

Toby, having trotted out into the garden, now returned with a large stone which he had culled as one might gather a bouquet of flowers to present upon a triumphant occasion.



Rosanne Ozanne

PART I

Although the Ozannes kept an hotel in Kimberley, they were not of the class usually associated with hotel-running in rough mining-towns. It was merely that, on their arrival in the diamond fields, they had accepted such work as came to their hands, in a place where people like Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Beit were washing blue ground for diamonds in their own claims, and other men, afterward to become world-famous millionaires, were standing behind counters bartering with natives or serving drinks to miners.

John Ozanne, the honest but not brilliant son of an English clergyman, did not disdain to serve behind his own bar, either, when his barman was sick, and his wife, in servantless days, turned to in the hotel kitchen and cooked the meals, though such work was far from her taste and had not been included in her upbringing as a country doctor's daughter. In fact, the pair of them were of the stuff from which good colonials are made, and they deserved the luck that gradually came to them.

In time, the little hotel grew into a large and flourishing concern. John Ozanne was seen no more in his bar, and his wife retired into the privacy of her own wing of the building, though her capable hand was still felt in the hotel management. It was at this period that the little twin daughters were born to them, adding a fresh note of sweetness to the harmony that existed between the devoted and prosperous couple.

They were bonny, healthy children, and very pretty, though not at all alike—little Rosanne being very dusky, while Rosalie was fair as a lily. All went well with them until about a year after their birth, when Rosanne fell ill of a wasting sickness as inexplicable as it was deadly. Without rhyme or reason that doctors or mother could lay finger on, the little mite just grew thinner and more peevish day by day, and visibly faded under their eyes. Every imaginable thing was tried without result, and, at last, the doctors grown glum and the mother despairing were obliged to admit themselves beaten by the mysterious sickness.

Late one afternoon, Mrs. Ozanne, sitting in her bedroom, realized that the end was near. The child lay on her lap, a mere bundle of skin and bone, green in colour and scarcely breathing. The doctor had just left with a sad shake of his head and the conclusive words:

"Only a matter of an hour or so, Mrs. Ozanne. Try and bear up. You have the other little one left."

But what mother's heart could ever comfort its pain for the loss of one loved child by thinking of those that are left? Heavy tears fell down Mrs. Ozanne's cheek on to the small, wasted form. Her trouble seemed the more poignant in that she had to bear it alone, for her husband was away on a trip to the old country. She herself was sick, worn to a shadow from long nursing and watching. But even now there was no effort, physical or mental, that she would not have made to save the little life that had just been condemned. Her painful brooding was broken by the sound of a soft and languorous voice.

"Baby very sick, missis?"

The mother looked up and saw, in the doorway, the new cook who had been with them about a week, and of whom she knew little save that the woman was a Malay and named Rachel Bangat. There was nothing strange in her coming to the mistress's room to offer sympathy. In a South African household the servants take a vivid interest in all that goes on. "Yes," said the mother, dully. The woman crept nearer and looked down on the little face with its deathly green shadows.

"Baby going to die, missis," she said.

Mrs. Ozanne bowed her head. There was silence then. The mother, blind with tears, thought the woman had gone as quietly as she came, but presently the voice spoke again, almost caressingly.

"Missis sell baby to me for a farthing; baby not die."

The mother gave a jump, then dashed the tears from her eyes and stared at the speaker. In the dusky shadows of the doorway the woman, in her white turban and black-and-gold shawl, seemed suddenly to have assumed a fateful air. Yet she was an ordinary enough looking Malay, of stout, even course, build, with a broad, high cheek-boned face that wore the grave expression of her race. It was only her dark eyes, full of a sinister melancholy, that differed from any eyes Mrs. Ozanne had ever seen, making her shiver and clutch the baby to her breast.

"Go away out of here!" she said violently, and the woman went, without a word. But within half an hour the languorous voice was whispering once more from the shadow of the doorway.

"Missis sell baby to me for a farthing; baby get well."

The mother, crouching over the baby, straining her ears for its faltering heart-beats, had no words. In a sort of numb terror she waved the woman off. It was no more than fifteen minutes later that the Malay came again; yet it seemed to Mrs. Ozanne that she waited hours with cracking ear-drums to hear once more the terms of the strange bargain. This time, the words differed slightly.

"Missis sell baby to me for two years; baby belong all to me; missis no touch, no speak." In the dark palm she proffered lay a farthing. "Take it quick, missis; baby dying."

Sophia Ozanne cast one anguished glance at the face of her child, then gave it up, clutched the farthing and fell fainting to the floor.

An hour later, other servants came to relate that the baby was still alive and its breathing more regular. In another hour, they reported it sleeping peacefully. The heart-wrung mother, still weak and quivering from her collapse, crept through the hotel and came faltering to the kitchen threshold, but dared not enter. Near the fire, on a rough bed formed of two chairs and a folded blanket, the child lay sleeping. Even from the door she could see that its colour was better and the green shadows gone. The atmosphere of the kitchen was gently warm. Rachel Bangat, with her back to the door, was busy at the table cutting up vegetables. Without turning round, she softly addressed the mother.

"You keep away from here. If you not remember baby my baby for two years, something happen!"

That was all. But under the languor of the voice lay a dagger-like menace that struck to the mother's heart.

"Oh, I'll keep the bargain," she whispered fervently. "Only—be kind to my child, won't you?"

"Malays always kind to children," said Rachel Bangat impassively, and continued peeling vegetables.

It was true. All Malay women have a passion for children, and consider themselves afflicted if they have never borne a child. Illegitimate and unwanted babies will always find a home open to them in the Malay quarter of any South African town. The mother, comforted in some sort by the knowledge, stole away—and kept away.

Within two weeks the child was sitting up playing with its toes. Within a month it was toddling about the kitchen, though the little sister did not walk until some weeks later. The story got about Kimberley, much as Mrs. Ozanne tried to keep it secret. For one thing, the child's extraordinary recovery could not be hidden The doctor's amazement was not less than that of the friends who had watched the progress of the child's sickness and awaited its fatal termination. These, having come to condole, stayed to gape at the news that Rosanne was better and down in the kitchen with the cook. Later, Mrs. Ozanne's nurse appeared regularly in the Public Gardens with only one baby, where once she had perambulated two. Little Rosanne was never seen, and, indeed, never left the back premises of the hotel except on Sunday afternoons, when Rachel Bangat arrayed her in gaudy colours and took her away to the Malay Location. The child's health, instead of suffering, seemed to thrive under this treatment, and she was twice the size of her twin sister. Mrs. Ozanne had means of knowing, too, that, though Rosanne gambolled round in the dust like a little animal all day, she was well washed at night and put to sleep in a clean bed. That was some comfort to the poor mother in her wretchedness. She knew that Kimberley tongues were wagging busily and that, thanks to the servants, the story had leaked out and was public property. There were not wanting mothers to condemn her for what they variously termed her foolishness, ignorant supersitition, and heartlessness. But there were others who sympathized, saying that she had done well in a bad situation to trust to the healing gift some Malays are known to possess together with many other strange powers for good and evil. The doctor himself, after seeing little Rosanne with a pink flush in her cheeks, had said to her mother:

"It's a mystery to me—in fact, something very like a miracle. But, as it turns out, you did quite right to let the woman have the child. I should certainly advise you to leave it with her for a time."

Even if he had not so advised and had there been no sympathizers, in the face of all opposition Mrs. Ozanne would have stuck to her bargain. She knew not what dread fear for her child's safety lay shuddering in the depths of her heart, but this she knew: that nothing could make her defy that fear by breaking bond with Rachel Bangat.

Even her husband's anger, when he returned from England, could not make her contemplate such a step. She had written and told him all about the matter from beginning to end, describing the gamut of emotions through which she had passed—anxiety, suffering, terror, and dreadful relief; and he had sympathized and seemed to understand, even applauding her action since the sequel appeared so successful.

But, apparently, he had never fully realized the main fact of the bargain until he returned to find that, while one little daughter was dainty and sweet under a nursemaid's care, the other, dressed in the gaudy bandanas and bangles of a Malay child, gambolled in the back yard or crawled in the kitchen among potato peelings and pumpkin pips. First aghast, then furious, he brooded over the thing, held back by his terrified wife from making a move. Then, at the end of three days, he broke loose.

"It's an outrage!" he averred, and stamped to the back regions with his wife hanging to his arm trying to stay him. In the kitchen no sign of Rachel Bangat, but the child was sitting in a small, rough-deal sugar-box, which served for waste and scraps, using it as a go-cart. Amidst the debris of vegetable and fruit peelings, she sat gurgling and banging with a chunk of pumpkin, while the other chubby hand held a half-eaten apple. John Ozanne caught her up.

"Leave her, John; for God's sake, leave her!" pleaded his wife, white-faced. At her words a sound came from the scullery, and the cook bounded into the doorway and stood looking with a dark eye.

"You take my baby?" she asked. Perhaps it was the gentleness of her tone that made John Ozanne stop to explain that it was not fitting for an Englishman's child to be dragged up in a kitchen, and that the thing could not go on any longer.

"I quite understand that you've been very good, my woman, and I shall see that you are well re——"

"You take her; she be dead in twenty-four hours," said Rachel Bangat impassively. Her deep languorous voice seemed to stroke its hearers like a velvety hand, yet had in it some deadly quality. To John Ozanne, unimaginative man though he was, it was like hearing the click of a revolver in the hand of an enemy who is a dead shot. His grasp slackened round the child, and his wife took her from him and set her back in the box. They went out alone. Never again was an attempt made to break the two years' compact.

At the end of the allotted time, Mrs. Ozanne returned the farthing to the Malay, who received it in silence but with a strange and secret smile. Little Rosanne, healthy and strong, was taken into the bosom of her family, and John Ozanne, with scant ceremony or sentiment, paid Rachel Bangat handsomely for her services and dismissed her. Presumable the Malay Location swallowed her up, for she was seen no more at the hotel, and the whole strange episode was, to all outward appearance, finished.

These happenings having been overpast for some fifteen years, many changes had come, in the meantime, to the Ozanne family. The head of it—that good citizen, husband, and father, John Ozanne—after amassing a large fortune, had severed his connection with the hotel and retired to enjoy the fruits of his industry. Fate, however, had not permitted him to enjoy them long, for he was badly injured in a carriage accident and died shortly afterward, leaving everything to his wife and daughters. The latter, having enjoyed the advantages of education in England and France, were now returned to their mother's wing, and the three lived together in a large, cool stone residence which, pleasantly situated in Belgravia (even then the most fashionable part of Kimberley), was known as Tiptree House.

Both girls were extremely pretty, with all the bloom and grace of their eighteen years upon them, and moved in the best society the place afforded—a society which, if not more cultured, was at least more alive and interesting than that of the average English country town. For Kimberley continued to be the place where the most wonderful diamonds were to be picked out of the earth, as commonly as shells off the beach of a South Sea Island, and the adventurous and ambitious still circulated there in great numbers. There was no lack of gaiety and excitement, and the Ozanne girls joined in all that went on, and were extremely popular, though in different ways and for different reasons. Rosalie, blond, with a nature as sunny as her hair, and all her heart to be read in her frank, blue eyes, was beloved by her friends for her sympathy and sweetness; while the feelings that Rosanne excited were more in the nature of admiration and astonishment at her wit and fascination, and the verve with which she threw herself into life. She was always in demand for brilliant functions, which she made the more brilliant by her presence; but, though she had the art of attracting both men and women, she also possessed a genius for searing and wounding those who came too close, and she was not able to keep her friends as Rosalie did. Her dark beauty was touched with something wild and mysterious that repelled even while it charmed, and her ways were as subtle and strange as her looks. Indeed, though she lived under the same roof with her mother and sister, and to all outward appearance seemed to be one with them in their daily life and interests, she was really an exile in her own family, and all three were aware of the fact. Rosalie and Mrs. Ozanne, being single-hearted, simple people, were in complete accord with one another; but there was no real intimacy between them and Rosanne, and though they had (for love of the latter) tried for years to break down the intangible barrier that existed, all efforts were vain and usually resulted in pain to themselves. It was as though Rosanne dwelt within the fortified camp of herself, and only came glancing forth like a black arrow when she saw an opportunity to deal a wound.

Mrs. Ozanne, in brooding over the matter—as she often did—silently and sadly, assigned this secret antagonism in Rosanne to the strange episode of the girl's babyhood, and bitterly blamed the Malay woman for stealing her child's heart and changing her nature. Sometimes she actually went so far as to wonder if it would not have been better to have let Rosanne die than have made the uncanny bargain that had restored her to health. Once she had even pondered over the possibility of the Malay having tricked her by exchanging the real Rosanne for another child, but it was impossible to entertain such an idea long; Rosanne bore too strong a resemblance to her father's side of the family, and there were, besides, certain small birthmarks which no art could have imitated.

Still, indubitably a something existed in Rosanne that was foreign to her family. And the cruel streak in her character which betrayed itself in cutting comments, as bright as they were incisive, and tiny acts of witty malice were incomprehensible to her kindly-natured mother and sister. Furthermore, her hatred, when it was aroused, seemed to possess the mysterious quality of a curse. For instance, it appeared to be enough for her to give one dark glance at someone she intensely disliked or who had crossed her wishes, for that person to fall sick, or suffer accident or loss or some unexpected ill. Mrs. Ozanne had noticed it times out of number; in fact, she secretly kept a sort of black list of all the things that had happened to people who had been so unfortunate as to offend Rosanne. At first, it had seemed to the mother impossible that there could be anything in the thing, but the evidence had gradually mounted up until now it was almost overwhelming. Besides, Mrs. Ozanne was not alone in remarking it. Rosalie, too, knew, and conveyed her knowledge in round-about ways to her mother, for they would never speak openly of this strangeness in one they dearly loved. But it was through Rosalie that the mother heard that the same thing had gone on at school. There, the other girls had superstitiously but secretly named Rosanne "The Hoodoo Girl," because to have much to do with her always brought you bad luck, especially if you fell out with her. In fact, whenever you crossed her in any way, "something happened," the girls said.

"Something happen!" Those had been the Malay cook's words that had haunted and intimidated Mrs. Ozanne. And that was what it all amounted to. Rosanne had, in some way, acquired the power of her foster-mother for making things of an unpleasant nature happen to people she did not like. Kind-hearted Mrs. Ozanne, with mind always divided between stern conviction and a wish to deride it, suffered a mental trepidation that grew daily more unbearable, for what had been serious enough when Rosanne was younger began to be something perilously sinister now that she was turning into a woman and her deeper passions and emotions began to be aroused. In fact, the thing had come home to Mrs. Ozanne with renewed significance lately, and she was still trembling with apprehension over several strange happenings.

This was one of them: Pretty Mrs. Valpy, an intimate of the family, and by way of being one of the only two close friends Rosanne could boast, had fallen out with the latter at a ball where she was chaperoning the two girls. From a little misunderstanding about a dance, a serious quarrel had arisen. Rosanne, considering herself engaged for the seventh waltz to Major Satchwell, had kept it for him only to find that Mrs. Valpy, having in error written his name down for the same dance instead of the next, had kept him to it, with the result that Rosanne was obliged to "sit it out," a proceeding not at all agreeable to her as the best dancer in Kimberley. She had been in a fury, and, when the two came to her at the end of the dance, she did not disguise her annoyance. Major Satchwell apologized and explained the error away as best he could, knowing himself in the wrong for having been prevailed upon by Mrs. Valpy; but the latter aggravated the offence by laughing merrily over it and saying, with a touch of malice:

"After all, you know, Rosanne, I'm the married woman, and if there was a doubt I should have the benefit of it before a mere girl. Besides, I'm sure it did you good to see, for once, what it feels like to be a wall-flower."

Rosanne gave her a look that quenched her merriment, and, she declared, made her feel queer all the evening; and when, in the dressing-room later, she tried to make it up with Rosanne, she was coldly snubbed. She then angrily remarked that it was the last time she would chaperon a jealous and bad-tempered girl to a dance, and left the sisters to go home with another married friend.

The next day her prize Pom, which, because she had no child, she foolishly adored, disappeared and was never seen again; and a few days later her husband fell very ill of pneumonia. On the day of the biggest race-meeting of the season, he was not expected to live, and on the night of the club ball he had a serious relapse, so that Violet Valpy, who adored racing and dancing, missed both these important fixtures. In the meantime, Major Satchwell was thrown from his horse and broke a leg.

Of course it was foolish, even blasphemous, to point any connection between Rosanne and these things—Mrs. Ozanne said so to herself ten times an hour—but, in their procedure, there was such a striking similarity to all Rosanne's "quarrel-cases," that the poor woman could not help adding them to the black list. Just as she could not help observing that, after the three events, Rosanne cheered up wonderfully and came out of the gloomy abstraction which always enveloped her when she was suffering from annoyance at the hands of others and left her when the offence had been mysteriously expiated by the offenders. Mrs. Ozanne was indeed deeply troubled. The disappearance of the Pom was bad enough; but, after all, George Valpy had nearly died, while poor Everard Satchwell would limp for life. It had once been supposed that he and Rosanne were fond of each other and might make a match of it. Mrs. Ozanne herself had believed that the girl liked him more than a little; but evidently this was not so, or—the worried woman did not finish the thought, even in her own mind, which was now busy with further problems connected with her beautiful, dark daughter.

Rosanne had always shown a great love for jewels. As a child, coloured stones were most popular with her, but since she grew up she had transferred her passion to diamonds, and, though her mother pointed out that such jewels were not altogether suitable to a young girl, she had gradually acquired quite a number of them and wore them with extraordinary keenness of pleasure. Some she had obtained in exchange for jewels that had been gifts from her mother or birthday presents from old friends of the family, her devouring passion for the white, sparkling stones apparently burning up all sentimental values. Even a string of beautiful pearls—one of two necklaces John Ozanne had invested his first savings in for his twin daughters—had gone by the board in exchange for a couple of splendid single-stone rings. An emerald pendant that had come from Mrs. Ozanne's side of the family, and been given to Rosanne on her seventeenth birthday, had been parted with also, to the mother's intense chagrin, Rosanne having thrown it into a collection of jewels which she exchanged, with an additional sum of money, for a little neck-circlet of small but very perfect stones that was the surprise and envy of all her girl friends.

She possessed, also, a fine pendant and several brooches, and was, moreover, constantly adding to her stock. It was her mother's belief that most of her generous allowance of pocket-money went in this direction, and more than once she expostulated with her daughter on the subject. But, as may have been already guessed, Rosanne was not made of malleable clay, or the mother's hands of the iron that moulds destinies. So the strange, dark daughter continued to do as she chose in the matter of jewels and, indeed, every other matter.

Not the least of the reasons for Mrs. Ozanne's disapproval of her daughter's jewel transactions was the fact that they took the girl into all sorts of places and among odd, mean people. She was hand and glove with every Jew and Gentile diamond-dealer in the place, but she also knew a number of other dealers of whom reputable dealers took no cognizance, and who dwelt behind queer, dingy shops whose windows displayed little, and where business was carried on in some gloomy inner room. Certainly, Mrs. Ozanne neither guessed at the existence of such people nor her daughter's acquaintance with them. It was enough for the poor woman that the sight of Rosanne sauntering in and out of jeweller's shops, leaning over counters, peering at fine stones or holding them up to the light, was a well-known one in Kimberley, and that many people gossiped about the scandal of such proceedings and blamed Mrs. Ozanne for letting the headstrong girl do these things.

However, it was not the thought of people's criticism on this point that was now troubling Mrs. Ozanne, but a matter far more disquieting. She had begun to realize that Rosanne, though she had long since exchanged away all her earlier jewels for diamonds, was still increasing her stock of the latter in a way that could not possibly be accounted for by her dress allowance; for she was fond of clothes, and her reputation as the best-dressed girl in Kimberley cost heavily. But even if she had spent the whole year's allowance in lump at the jewellers', it would not have paid for the beautiful stones she had lately displayed.

On the night of the club ball, for instance, in a room packed with pretty women beautifully gowned and jewelled, Rosanne blazed forth, a radiant figure that put everyone else in the shade. In a particularly rare golden-red shade of orange tulle, her faultless shoulders quite bare, her long throat and small dark head superbly held and ablaze with jewels, she was a vision of fire. She looked like a single flame that had become detached from some great conflagration and was swaying and dancing through the world alone. She shone and sparkled and flickered, and was the cynosure of all eyes. Mrs. Ozanne had never been so proud of her—and so perturbed. For where had that new diamond spray of maidenhair fern come from, that shone so gloriously against the glossy bands and curls of dark hair; and whence the single stone, that, like a great dewdrop, hung on her breast, suspended by a platinum chain so fine as to be almost invisible? Other people were asking these questions also, and once the distracted mother, lingering in a cool corner of the balcony while her daughters were dancing, heard the voice of an acquaintance saying acidly:

"What a fool the mother is! She must be ruining herself to buy that girl diamonds to trick herself out in—like a peacock!"

Rosanne did not look like a peacock at all, but like fire and water made incarnate. The diamonds she wore seemed as much a part of her natural element as her hair and eyes and the tinted ivory flesh of her. Mrs. Ozanne knew it, and so did the speaker, who was also the mother of three plain daughters. But that did not bring balm to Sophia Ozanne's heart, or did it comfort her soul that Sir Denis Harlenden, the distinguished traveller and hunter, after some weeks of apparent dangling at Rosanne's heels, was now paying such open and unmistakable court that all other mothers could not but sit up and enviously take notice. Rosalie, too, it was plain, had a little hook in the heart of Richard Gardner, a promising young advocate and one of the best matches in Kimberley. But what booted it to Sophia Ozanne to triumph over other mothers when her mind was filled with forebodings and unhappy problems? She tried solving one of these on arriving home after the ball, but with no very great success.

In the dim-lit hall of Tiptree House—a lofty, pleasant room arranged as a lounge—they all lingered a few moments. Rosalie, with a dreaming look in her blue eyes, stood sipping a glass of hot milk. Rosanne had thrown off her white velvet cloak and flung herself and her crushed tulle into a great armchair. Mrs. Ozanne, with a cup of chocolate in her hand, looked old and weary—though in point of years she was still a young woman.

"Rosanne," she ventured, "a lot of people were remarking on your diamonds tonight."

"Yes?" said the girl carelessly. Her thoughts seemed elsewhere, and she did not look happy, in spite of the success that had been hers that evening.

"Yes; even Dick—" put in Rosalie timidly, then corrected herself—"even Mr. Gardner noticed them, and rather wondered, I think, how you came to be wearing such beautiful stones."

Rosanne sat up swiftly.

"Dick Gardner had better mind his own business," she said quickly, "or he will be sorry. I never liked that man."

Rosalie turned pale. Mrs. Ozanne braced herself to the defence of her gentle, little, fair daughter.

"But, my dear, it is not only Mr. Gardner; I heard many people saying things—that I must be ruining myself to buy you such jewels, and that——"

"Well, you're not, mother, are you?" Rosanne had risen and stood, smiling her subtle, ironical smile.

"No, dear, of course not; but I feel very uneasy, and I should like to know——"

"You need never feel uneasy about me, mother. I am well able to take care of myself and mind my own affairs"—she began to move out of the room—"and I also know how to deal with interfering people who try to mind them for me. Don't worry, mother dear, but go to bed. You look tired."

The door closed behind her. Rosalie threw herself into her mother's arms.

"Oh, mother, she meant that for Dick!" she cried, and burst into tears. Mrs. Ozanne, trembling herself, strove to comfort her child.

"Nonsense, darling, she's only cross and tired. She did not mean anything. Besides, what can—" She faltered and broke off.

"What can't she do?" sobbed Rosalie. "And Dick did, he did say that everyone was amazed at her diamonds—and so they were."

"But what is all this about Dick, dear?" asked her mother, with a tender little smile. The subject was changed, as she meant it to be.

"Oh, mummie, we're engaged! I was only waiting for Rosanne to go to tell you; and I was so happy."

"And you will go on being happy, darling. He is a splendid fellow—and a good man, too. Nothing shall happen to prevent your being the happiest pair alive," comforted Mrs. Ozanne, and, with crooning, motherly words, herded Rosalie to bed. But she herself stayed sleepless for many hours.

"Rosanne," she said, at lunch the next day, before Rosalie came in, "I think you ought to know that your sister is engaged to Richard Gardner."

Rosanne started and stared at her mother in silence for a moment. It even seemed to Mrs. Ozanne that a little of the bright colour left her cheek.

"It happened last night, and he is coming to see me this afternoon."

Then Rosanne said a queer thing.

"I can't help that." Her face had a brooding, enigmatic look, and she seemed to be staring at her mother without seeing her. "I'm sorry, but I can't help it," she repeated slowly.

"Help it!" Mrs. Ozanne's eyes took on a haggard look. "What do you mean, dear?"

"Nothing," said the girl abruptly, and began to talk about something else as Rosalie came into the room. No more was said about the engagement, and Rosanne, after hurrying through her lunch and barely eating anything, jumped up and hurried away with the announcement that she was going down to Kitty Drummund's and would not be back to tea.

Kitty Drummund was that other close friend of whom mention has already been made. A young married woman, her husband was manager of one of the big compounds belonging to the De Beers Company. A compound is an enormous yard fenced with corrugated iron, inside which dwell several hundreds of natives employed down in the mines. These natives are kept inside the compounds for spells of three to six months, according to contract, and during that time are not allowed to stir out for any purpose whatsoever, except to go underground, the shaft-head being in the enclosure. At the end of their contracts, they are allowed to return to their kraals, after having been rigorously searched to make certain that they have no diamonds on them. Scores of white men are employed in the business of guarding, watching, and searching the natives, and it was over these men and, indirectly, over the natives, also, that Leonard Drummund was manager, his job obliging him and his wife to live far from the fashionable quarter of Kimberley.

Their house, in fact, though outside the compound, was close beside it and within the grounds of the company, being fenced off from the town by a high wire fence. The only entrance into this enclosure was an enormous iron gate through which all friends of the Drummunds or visitors to the compound had to pass, under the scrutinizing stare of the man on guard, who had also the right to challenge persons as to what business took them into the company's grounds. It was thus that De Beers guarded, and still do guard to this day, the diamond industry from thieves and pirates, and would-be members of the illicit diamond-buying trade.

Through this big gate, on the afternoon after the club ball, Rosanne passed unchallenged, as she was in the habit of doing four or five times a week, being well known to all the guards as a friend of Mrs. Drummund's. Many of the guards were acquaintances of hers, also, for, when they were not in the act of guarding, they were young men about town, qualifying for bigger positions in the company's employ. The young fellow on guard that day had danced with Rosanne the night before, and when she went through she gave him a smile and a friendly nod. He thought what a lovely, proud little face she had, and that that fellow Harlenden would be a lucky man to get her, even if he were a baronet.

Kitty Drummund, among cushions and flowers, behind the green blinds of her veranda, was waiting in a hammock for her friend. For a very happy reason she had been obliged to forego gaieties for a time; but her interest in them remained, and she was dying to hear all about the ball. Rosanne, however, seemed far from being in her usual vein of quips and quirks and bright, ironical sayings about the world in general. Indeed, her conversation was of the most desultory description, and Kitty gleaned little more news of her than she had already found in the morning newspaper. Between detached snatches of talk, the girl fell into long moments of moody silence, and even tea and cigarettes did not unknit her brow or loose her tongue. Kitty, who not only expected to be entertained about the dance but had also excellent reasons for supposing she should hear something very exciting and important about Rosanne herself, was vaguely troubled and disappointed. At last she ventured a gentle feeler.

"What about Sir Denis, Nan?"

Rosanne turned a thoughtful gaze on her, and this time a little of her old mockery glimmered in it.

"He still survives."

"Don't be silly, darling. Len heard this morning at the club—what everyone is saying—you know—how much he is in love with you, and that he's sure to propose soon."

"He proposed last night, Kit. We are engaged."

Kitty sat up with dancing eyes.

"And you've been keeping it back all this time! Oh, Rosanne, how could you? Such a darling man! You are lucky. What a lovely bride you'll make! You must put it off until I can come. Shall you be married in bright colours, as you always said you would? And you'll be Lady Harlenden!"

Kitty was not a snob, but titles didn't often come her way and she couldn't help taking a whole-hearted delight in the fact that Rosanne would have one.

"I shall never be Lady Harlenden. I don't mean to marry him, Kit."

"Don't mean to marry him!" Kitty Drummund's lips fell apart and all the dancing excitement went out of her eyes. She sat and stared. At last she said wonderingly but with conviction:

"But you care for him, Rosanne!"

"I know," said the other sombrely. "I love him. I love him, and I can't resist letting him know and taking his love for a little while. It is so wonderful. Oh, Kit, it is so wonderful! But I can never marry him. I am too wicked."

"Wicked!"

Kitty stared at her. The lovely dark face had become extraordinarily distorted and anguished, and seemed actually to age under Kitty's eyes. The girl put up her hands and pressed them to her temples.

"Oh, I am so unhappy," she muttered, "and I can't tell any one! Mother and Rosalie don't understand——"

Kitty Drummund was only frivolous on the surface. At core she was sound, a good woman and a loyal friend. She took the girl's hands.

"Tell me, dear," she said gravely; "I'll try and help."

But Rosanne shook her head. The agonized, tortured look passed slowly from her features, and her face became once more composed, though white as ashes. Her eyes were dull as burnt-out fires.

"I can't," she said heavily. "I can't tell any one; I don't even understand it myself."

She fell into silence again, but presently turned to Kit with a stern look, half commanding, half imploring.

"Swear you'll never tell any one what I've said, Kit—about the engagement or anything else."

Kitty promised solemnly.

"Not even Len," insisted Rosanne.

"Not even Len. But, oh, Nan, I shall pray that it will all come right!"

"Prayers are no good," said Rosanne, with abrupt bitterness. "God knows I've given them a fair chance!"

"Darling, one never knows when a prayer may be answered, but it will be—sometime."

Rosanne began suddenly to talk of something else, and the strange incident ended; for when Rosanne wished to drop a subject she dropped it, and put her foot on it in such a way that it could not be picked up again. Besides, this was scarcely one on which Kitty, however much she desired to help, could press her friend. So she did the wisest thing she could think of under the circumstances—made the girl go indoors to the piano and play to her. She knew that Rosanne gave, and was given to, by music in a way that is only possible to deep, inarticulate natures such as possess the musician's gift. One had only to listen to her music, thought Kitty, to know that there were depths in her that no woman would ever fathom, though a man might, some day. Denis Harlenden might—if she would let him.

Listening, as she lay in her hammock, to the wild, strange chords flung from under Rosanne's fingers, and again the plaintive, tender notes that stole out like wounded birds and fluttered away on broken wings to the sunlight, Kitty realized that she was an ear-witness to the interpretation of a soul's pain. Though she had never heard of Jean Paul Richter's plaint to music—"Thou speakest to me of those things which in all my endless days I have found not, nor shall find"—something of the torment embodied in those exquisitely bitter words came to her through Rosanne's music, and she was able to realize some tithe of what the girl was suffering.

Yet, in the end, Rosanne came out of the drawing-room with the shadows gone from her face and all the old mocking, glancing life back in it. If she had given of her torment to music, music, whether for good or ill, had restored to her the vivid and delicate power which made up her strangely forceful personality. She was hurriedly drawing on her gloves.

"I've just remembered the Chilvers' dinner-party tonight and must fly. You know how Molly Chilvers nags if one is late for her dull old banquets."

She kissed Kitty, tucked a rug round her, for the cool of evening was beginning to fall, and went her ways. But as she followed the path that led through the blue-ground heaps, past the iron compound, and down to the big gate, she was thinking that if Molly Chilvers' banquets were dull, the banquet of life was not, and it was the banquet of life she had put her lips to since she knew and loved Denis Harlenden. She was to meet him tonight! That thought had power enough to drive out the little snakes of despair and desolation that had been eating her heart all day. Let the morrows, with their pain of parting, take care of themselves! Today, it was good to be alive! That was her philosophy as she went, light-foot, through the blue-ground heaps.

There was no one about in the big outer enclosure. The monotonous chanting of Kafir songs came over the iron walls of the compound, the murmuring of many voices, clank of pot and pan, smell of fires, and the soft, regular beat of some drumlike native instrument. The day-shift boys had come up from the mines and were preparing their evening meal.

Passers-by were never supposed to go near to the walls of the compound, but in one place the path wound within a yard or two of it, and, as it happened, this spot was just out of eye-reach of the towers which stood at the four corners of the compound (unless the guards popped their heads out of the window, which they rarely did). True, the guard at the gate commanded a full view of the spot, but if he had been looking when Rosanne reached it, he would only have seen her stooping to tie up her shoe. He was not looking, however. It was not his custom, even though it might be his duty, to spy on Mrs. Drummund's visitors, especially such a visitor as Miss Ozanne. Therefore, no one saw that, when she had finished tying up her shoe, she leaned forward from the path and slid out her hand to a tiny mound of earth that lay near the compound wall—a little mound that might very well have been pushed up by a mole on the other side—dived her fingers into the earth, and withdrew a small package wrapped in a dirty rag. Then, swiftly she thrust something back into the earth, smoothed the little heap level, rose from tying her shoe, and lightly sauntered on her way. The next time she had occasion to use her handkerchief she slipped the little package into her pocket, and so, empty-handed except for her sunshade, she passed through the big gate.

At seven o'clock that evening, the carriage stood before the door of Tiptree House, waiting to convey the Ozanne family to the Chilvers' dinner-party, and Mrs. Ozanne, in black velvet and old lace, waited in the hall for her two daughters. She sat tapping with her fan upon a little Benares table before her, turning over in her mind, as she had been doing all the afternoon, two sentences from a letter Richard Gardner had sent her. It was an honourable and manly letter, putting forward his feelings for Rosalie and the fact that he had already asked her to be his wife. He had meant, he wrote, to call that afternoon on Mrs. Ozanne and ask verbally for her consent to the engagement, but something had happened to prevent his coming. However, he hoped, all being well, to call instead on the following day and put his position before Mrs. Ozanne.

"Something has happened!" "All being well!"—those were the phrases that repeated themselves in Sophia Ozanne's mind over and over again, rattling like two peas in an empty drum. It was on account of them that she had refrained from showing Rosalie the note; but her precaution was wasted, for the girl had also received a letter from her lover, and, curiously enough, it contained the two sentences which were so vividly present in Mrs. Ozanne's consciousness. Rosalie had repeated them to her mother at tea-time, and in the quiet drawing-room, as the two women sat looking at each other with apprehensive eyes across the teacups, the seemingly innocent words sounded strangely pregnant of trouble.

Perhaps that was why Rosalie looked less pretty than usual as she came in and joined her mother. Her white satin gown gave her a ghostly air, and the forget-me-not eyes had faint pink rims to them that were unbecoming. The mother had barely time to make these mental observations when Rosanne entered. To their surprise, she was still in her afternoon gown and hat.

"I'm not going to the Chilvers' tonight," she said rapidly. "I've already sent Molly a message, but please make her my further excuses, mother."

"But, my dear," exclaimed Mrs. Ozanne reproachfully, "you'll spoil her party! I think you ought to make an effort, even if you are late."

"Oh, no, mother; I can't. Besides, it was silly of her to give a party the night after a ball, when everyone is fagged out." She looked the picture of glowing health as she said it—more like some bright wild mountain-flower than a girl.

"I'm quite sure you are not so tired as either Rosalie or myself," pursued her mother warmly, "and I think that at least you might have let me know of your decision earlier."

"Yes, mother; I suppose I might, though I don't quite know what difference it would have made. I beg your pardon, anyway. But I don't see why you go, either, if you are tired. Rosalie looks dead beat." She was looking at her sister in an oddly tender way.

"Nothing wrong, I hope, Rosie?" she asked, in a voice so soft and appealing that Mrs. Ozanne would not have been astonished if the gentle and easily moved Rosalie had responded by pouring out her heart. But, instead, she turned away, biting a trembling lip, and put on her wraps without speaking. Rosanne shrugged her shoulders and went out of the room in her rapid, silent way.

"Mother, I feel I hate her!" Rosalie muttered, with burning eyes. Her mother was profoundly shocked.

"Oh, hush, my darling!" she whispered. "You don't know what you are saying."

Linking her arm in her daughter's, she led the way in silence to the carriage.

Rosanne, meanwhile, went into the dining-room and had something cold brought to her there by Maria, the old Cape cook. All the other servants were out for the evening, as was the rule on the rare occasions when the family did not entertain. Having dined, the girl went to her bedroom. The house was of the bungalow type—everything on the ground floor and no upper stories. All the bedrooms gave on to the great veranda that ran round the house, but Rosanne's room, being at the corner, had two French windows, one facing the front garden with a full view of the tennis-courts and drive, the other, shaded by creepers and a great tree-fern, looked out to the clustered trees and winding paths of the side gardens. It was from this door that Rosanne emerged, half an hour later, dressed in something so subtly night-coloured that she looked like a grey moth flickering through the trees of the garden. Softly she let herself out of the little side gate chiefly used by the servants, and, slipping from shadow to shadow in the dim lights of quiet back streets, she made her way toward the commercial part of the town. The main street—that same Du Toit's Pan Road where John Ozanne's hotel had once flourished—was brightly lighted by large arc-lamps, but never once did Rosanne come within range of these. It was in a dingy lane giving off from the big thoroughfare that she at last stopped before a shop whose shuttered window bore the legend—"Syke Ravenal: Jeweller." Upon an undistinguished looking side door she knocked gently, distinctly, three times. It opened as if by magic, and, like a shadow, she slipped into the darkness behind it.

Harlenden was a little early. Rosanne had said nine o'clock, and it wanted, perhaps, twenty minutes to the hour when he rang at Tiptree House and was told by Maria, after a few moments' waiting, that she could not find Miss Rosanne anywhere.

"Very well; I'll wait here," he said, and, lighting a cigar, sat down in one of the deep chairs in the dimly lighted veranda.

He was a lean, fair, well-groomed man, with a hard-cut face that told nothing. You had to make your own deductions from a pair of stone-grey eyes, a mouth close-lipped without being cold, and a manner not wanting in indications of arrogance that yet pleased by a certain careless grace and sureness. As Emerson says, "Do as you please, and you may do as you please, for, in the end, if you are consistent you will please the world." Perhaps it was his unfailing habit of following out this rule that made the world respect Denis Harlenden, even if it were not pleased with him. Certainly, his people would not be very pleased that he had chosen a Kimberley hotel-keeper's daughter to carry on the line of one of the oldest baronetcies in England. But, to speak with truth, he had given neither his people nor the Kimberley Hotel a thought in the matter. He loved Rosanne for her wit, her beauty, her courage, a certain sportsmanlike daring which showed in all her actions, and her unlikeness to any other woman he had ever known. Moreover, he was certain that she was the one woman who could keep his love without boring him. He, like Kitty Drummund, was aware of unfathomed depths in her, and he was not at all sure that he should like everything he found in those depths if he ever fathomed them. But, in any case, he preferred them to shallows. A shallow woman could not have kept Denis Harlenden's heart for a week—or a day. He also valued surprises, and Rosanne was full of surprises.

She gave him one now. At the sound of a slight, crushing of gravel underfoot, he had risen and stepped toward the end of the veranda, and, standing there beside the great tree-fern, he saw her coming from the side garden into the faint rays of light from the house. She had her two hands folded over her breast as though holding something precious there, and her face was rapt. He had never before seen her in that odd, sheathlike garment of silver-grey velvet. It gave her, he thought, with that brooding look on her face and her faintly smiling mouth, an air of moon-like mysteriousness. Almost as silently as a moonbeam, she slid into the veranda and would have passed on into her room but that he put his arms round her and drew her to his heart.

The thought had come over him suddenly to test her courage and coolness thus, and she did not disappoint him. For a moment he felt her heart fluttering like a wild bird against his; then she gave a little low laugh.

"Oh, Denis!" she whispered, against his lips. But when he let her go he saw that her face was white as milk.

"You were frightened, then?" he questioned.

"No, no; I knew at once it was you—by the scent of your dear coat." She stroked it with one hand, then made to move away, but he still held her. What had made her turn white, then, if she were not afraid?

"Let me go away and change my gown," she said, trying to edge away into the dark.

"But why? I love it. You are like a witch of the moon in it."

"No; it isn't a nice gown," she insisted childishly and still tried to escape, but he could be obstinate, too.

"I want you to keep it on—and, darling, darling, don't waste any of the moments we may be together! You told me yourself it could only be an hour."

She gave a deep sigh. It was true. Moments spent with him were too precious to waste. There might not be so many more. Still, she did not abandon her plan to get away from him to her room, if only for a minute. Gently she resisted his half-movement to lead her to a chair. He knew, by now, that she was holding something in her left hand which she did not wish him to see. They remained standing by the tree-fern, each will striving for supremacy. In the meantime, he went on speaking in his extraordinary charming voice that had power to make her heart ache with even the memory of its dear sound.

"Not that I can see why I should only have an hour."

"Mother will be back by ten," she said.

"Why shouldn't she know at once? I don't like this hole-and-corner business, Rosanne. It is not good enough for you." He kissed her on the lips, and added, "Or me."

Her face was in shadow, but his was not, and she could see that fires were lighted in the stone-grey eyes that banished all its masklike impassivity and brought a wonderful beauty into it. She stood trembling to his kiss and his voice and the magic of her love for him. Almost it seemed as if she must do as he wished. But she knew she must not. If her mother once knew, everyone would have to know, and how brutal that would be to him when she had to tell him that it must all come to an end, that she could not and would not marry him!

"You must let me tell her tonight," he was saying, with quiet firmness.

"No, no!" she faltered.

"Yes. And there is another thing; give me your left hand, Rosanne."

She did not give it so much as that he drew it from behind her. It was tightly clenched. Holding it in his own, he drew her to a chair at last. She seemed to have no more strength to resist. Then, sitting down before her, he gently unclenched one finger after another until what she had hidden there lay sparkling in the night. Almost as if it had been something evil, he shook it from her palm into her lap, and taking her hand to his lips, kissed it, then placed upon the third finger a ring.

"You must only like the jewels I give you, Rosanne," he said, with unveiled meaning.

They sat there for a long, aching, exquisitely silent moment, her hand in his, the great square emerald set in a wonderful filigree and scrolling of gold on her finger, the other thing gleaming with a baleful light between them. Then the spell broke with the roll of carriage wheels on the drive. A minute later, Mrs. Ozanne came into the veranda, Rosalie clinging to her arm. Harlenden was on his feet instantly, and, before Rosanne could intervene, had proffered his request to speak to her mother. The latter looked as much dazed by his words as his presence.

"Not tonight, Sir Denis, please."

"It is rather important," he pleaded, looking very boyish. But she seemed to notice nothing, and shook her head.

"Some other time—my poor Rosalie is ill—in trouble; she has heard some distressing news."

He drew back at once, apologizing, and a few minutes later was gone. Rosanne followed her mother and sister into the house, a strangely yearning, sorrowful look upon her face. Nothing was said. Rosalie seemed half-fainting, and her mother, still supporting her, led her to the door of her bedroom. They disappeared together. Rosanne stared after them, but made no attempt to help. When they had gone, she sat still in the hall, waiting. Sometimes she looked at the sparkling thing in her hand (she had caught it up from her lap when her mother came into the veranda), a slim, flexible string of diamonds for weaving in the hair—glowing and glimmering like spurts of flame imprisoned within frozen dewdrops. Sometimes she looked at the great emerald Denis Harlenden had set on her finger. But her eyes had something of the fixed, unseeing stare of the sleep-walker. At last Sophia Ozanne came back and stood beside her. Neither looked at the other.

"What is it mother?" she asked, in a low voice.

"Richard Gardner is very ill. They hoped it was only a sore throat that would soon yield to treatment; but he went to a specialist today—that Doctor Stratton who came out to see the Cape governor's throat—and he seems to think—" Poor Mrs. Ozanne halted and choked as if she herself were suffering from an affection of the throat. Rosanne still sat silent and brooding.

"He seems to think it is something malignant—and, in that case, he and poor Rosalie—" She broke down.

"Will never be able to marry, mother?" asked Rosanne, not curiously, only sadly, as if she knew already. Her mother nodded.

"Who told you?"

"Richard's brother was at the Chilvers'; he thought we had better know at once."

Mrs. Ozanne sat down by the little Benares table and, resting her face on her hands, began to cry quietly. Rosanne stared before her with an absorbed stare. She seemed in a very transport of grave thought. When Mrs. Ozanne at length raised her eyes for an almost furtive glance, she thought she had never seen anything so tragic as her daughter's face. Her own was working horribly with misery and some urgent necessity.

"Rosanne!" she stammered at last, afraid of the sound of her own words. "Couldn't you do something?"

The girl removed her dark gaze from nothingness and transferred it to her mother's imploring, fearful eyes.

"Oh, mother!" she said quietly. "Oh, mother! I am more unhappy than you or Rosalie can ever be!"



PART II

Rosalie Ozanne kept her bed for a week or more. She had sunk into a sort of desolate lethargy of mind and body from which nothing could rouse her. Her mother was in despair. Richard Gardner was too ill to come to see the girl he loved, and he did not write. The blow that had fallen upon his promising and prosperous life seemed to have shattered his nerves and benumbed his initiative. He had no words of hope for Rosalie; so he said nothing. Thus, in silence and apart, the two were suffering their young agony of wrecked hopes and love laid on its bier.

Rosanne, meanwhile, to all appearances, went on her way rejoicing. For a moment, in the shock of mutual grief over Rosalie's trouble, she and her mother had drawn nearer in spirit, and strange words of sorrow and sympathy, as though dragged from her very depths, had come faltering from the girl's lips. But the next day all trace of such unaccustomed softness had disappeared. She was her gay, resilient self once more, bright and hard as the stones she loved to wear, and more reserved and withdrawn from her family than ever. She avoided both her mother and sister as much as possible, spending most of her time in her own room or with her friend Kitty Drummund. As usual, too, she was often out riding and driving—but no longer with Denis Harlenden. Major Satchwell had been received back into the favour of her intimate friendship, and it was he who was always to be found riding or limping at her side.

Harlenden had not called at Tiptree House since the night when, after the Chilvers' dinner-party, he had requested an interview with Mrs. Ozanne and been asked to wait until a more propitious moment. Indeed, the latter, with mind full of foreboding and sorrow for her stricken child, had almost forgotten that he had ever made such a request. But Rosanne had not forgotten. And Rosanne knew why her lover stayed away from Tiptree House. He had made his reason sufficiently clear in a letter she had received the morning after their last meeting in the veranda. The terse sentences of that letter were like himself—cold and quiet without, but with the burn of hidden fires beneath the surface.

"Until you are prepared to let the world know how things are with us, I shall not come again. And another thing, Rosanne: I love you. Your kiss is on my lips, and no other woman's lips shall ever efface its exquisite memory You love me, too, I think. But do you love me more than certain other things? If not, and if you cannot be the Rosanne I wish you to be, caring only for such things as are worthy of your beauty and my pride, this love of ours can never come to its perfection but will have to be rooted out and crushed as a useless, hopeless thing. When you see this as I do, send for me. I shall not be long in coming."

Curiously enigmatic words if read by any but the eyes for which they were intended. But Rosanne knew what they meant, and read them with her teeth dug into her lip and cheeks pale as a bone. The first time she read them she burst into a furious, ringing laugh, and crushing the letter into a ball, flung it into the waste-paper basket and went out. That was the afternoon on which she renewed her friendship with Everard Satchwell. But when she came home she sought the waste-paper basket, and taking out the letter, uncrumpled it and read it again. Thereafter she read it many times. Sometimes she went to bed with it crushed to her breast. But she never answered it. Instead, she wrote to Everard Satchwell and completed the work, already begun, of beguiling him back into her life just as he was beginning to hope he could do without her.

One day, when she was out riding with him, they met Harlenden riding alone. He had a moody, lonely look that wrenched at her heart for a moment until she saw the civilly indifferent smile with which he returned her half-appealing glance and Satchwell's cheery greeting. As their eyes met, his were so empty of what she knew they could contain for her that her heart turned cold in her breast. For the first time, the well-bred impassivity of his face irked and infuriated her. She doubted, almost hated him. She could have struck him with her riding-whip because he gave no sign of the hurt she had dealt him, but, instead, her face grew almost as smilingly masklike as his own; only when she got home, within the refuge of her bedroom walls, did it change and become distorted with pain and rage, its beauty marred and blotted out with tears.

That he should ride coolly by and give no sign, while her heart ached as if a knife were in it, while she drained to the dregs the cup of lonely love! That was bitter. But bitterer still the knowledge that within herself lay the reason of their separation, as well as the power to end it. She could bring him back this very hour if she wished, was her thought. Yet, could she? Were not those other bonds that held her soul in slavery stronger than herself—stronger (as he had suggested in his letter) than her love for Denis Harlenden?

Miserably, her face lifeless and pale as the face of one who has lain among the ashes of renouncement and repentance, she rose from the bed where she had flung herself weeping, and creeping to an old-fashioned oak bureau of heavy make, sat down before it and began to unlock its many drawers and take therefrom a number of little jewel-cases. One by one she opened these and spread before her the radiant, sparkling things they contained with their myriad points of light and dancing colour. She ran the things through her fingers and bathed her hands in them like water. Then she curved her palms into a cup and held them filled to the brim with such a sparkling draught as only a god could drink—a draught with fire and ice in it, blood and crystal water, purity and evil. The roses of life and the blue flowers of death were all intermingled and reflected in that magic draught of frozen fire and liquid crystal. As the girl gazed into it, colour came back to her pale face, and her eyes caught and returned the flashing beams of light. It almost seemed as if she and the stones, able to communicate, were exchanging the signals of some secret code.

One jewel was more beautiful than all the rest, the lovely, flexible chain of stones she had been holding to her breast that night when Harlenden surprised her coming from the garden into the veranda—the thing he had shaken from her hand into her lap as if it had been a toad. She remembered Harlenden, now, as she gazed into the iridescent shapes of light, seeming to see in their brilliant, shallow depths worlds of romance that every-day life knew not of. At last she caught the thing up and kissed it burningly, then pressed it against her heart as if it possessed some quality of spikenard to ease the pain she still felt aching there. The sound of the dinner-gong shook her from her strange dreams, and hastily, yet with a sort of lingering regret, she began to gather up the jewels and lay them once more into their downy nests of white velvet. Her fingers caressed and her eyes embraced every single stone as she laid it away.

"I must get some more," she murmured feverishly to herself; "I must get some more—soon!"

She had forgotten Denis Harlenden now. Her lips took on a hungry, arid line, and her eyes were suddenly hard and more brilliant than the stones she handled. The lust of diamonds, which is one of the greatest and most terrible of all the lusts, had got her in its scorpion-claws and was squeezing love from her heart and beauty from her soul.

"Rosanne, your sister is worse," her mother said, at dinner. They had reached dessert, but these were the first words that had passed between them. Rosanne's shoulders moved with the suggestion of a shrug.

"I think she gives way," she remarked coldly. "She could shake off that illness with the exercise of a little self-control."

"It is easy to talk like that when you are not the sufferer, dear. You forget that her whole heart is wrapped up in Dick. I believe that if he dies, she will—." The mother's words ended in something very like a sob. She looked utterly worn out and wretched. Her eyes wistfully searched Rosanne's, but the latter's mood appeared to be one of complete sang-froid.

"You always look on the worst side of things, mother," she said calmly. "If Dick dies, and I daresay he will—cancer of the throat is nearly always fatal, I believe—Rosalie will get over it in time and marry some other man."

"Rosanne, I never thought you could be so heartless!"

"Nonsense, mother; it isn't heartlessness but common sense, and I think you ought not to encourage Rosalie by being sympathetic. A little bracing brutality is what she needs to pull her out of her misery."

Mrs. Ozanne rose, her eyes shining with anger as well as tears.

"I forbid you to speak to me of your unhappy sister unless you can speak kindly," she said, and added harshly; "I sometimes think, Rosanne, that you are either not my child or that that Malay woman bewitched and cast some evil spell over you when you were a baby."

Rosanne looked at her with musing eyes.

"I have sometimes thought so myself," she said slowly, "and that, instead of you reproaching me, it is I who have the right to reproach you for bartering me away to witchcraft rather than letting me die an innocent little child."

Sophia Ozanne's lips fell apart, and the colour died slowly out of her handsome, wholesome-looking face. She said nothing while she stood there gazing for a long minute at her daughter; but her breath came laboriously, and she held her hand over her heart as if she had received a blow there. At last, in silence, she walked heavily from the room.

Rosanne helped herself daintily to fruit salad, but when she had it on her plate she did nothing but stare at it. After a few moments she rang the bell and sent out a message to the stables that she would require the carriage for an hour.

"And tell my mother, if she asks, that I have gone to Mrs. Drummund's," she directed old Maria, as she went away to her room to put on a hat and wrap.

"It is pretty awful at home now," she complained to Kitty Drummund, some twenty minutes later. "The whole house is wrapped in gloom because Dick Gardner has a sore throat. One might as well live in a mausoleum."

"Dearest, it is a little more than a sore throat, isn't it? Len saw Tommy Gardner today, and he says Dick is in awful pain and can't speak. They are sending him away to the Cape tonight, as a last hope. Doctor Raymond, there, is supposed to be wonderfully clever with affections of the throat, though I must say I don't believe it will be much good, since Stratton has condemned him."

"Oh, talk about something else, Kit, for heaven's sake!" cried Rosanne, with a sudden access of desperate irritation. "I can't bear any more Dick Gardner."

Kitty stroked the hair and bare shoulders of the girl sitting on the floor beside her.

"I know you're not really heartless, Nan, but you do sound so sometimes. I expect all this trouble at home is on your nerves a little bit. Tell me, how are your own affairs, darling? Is the engagement still going on?"

"No; the engagement is finished. I told you I never meant to marry him."

"I think you are making an awful mistake, Nan. He's the only man for you—the only man who can——"

"Can what?" asked Rosanne, with fierce moodiness. "Save my soul alive?"

"How strange! Those were the very words I was going to use, though I don't know why. They just came into my head."

"Everyone seems to be hitting the right nail on the head tonight," commented Rosanne dryly. "First, my mother; now, you. I wonder who'll be the third. All good things run in threes, don't they?"

Kitty knew better than to try to cope with her in that mood, so she remained silent until Rosanne rose and caught up her hat.

"Oh, don't go yet, darling! Do stay and see Len. He had to go out directly after dinner, but he promised not to be long. Fancy! They're having such excitement up at the compound. But I don't know whether I ought to tell you, though," she finished doubtfully.

"Oh, yes, do!" said Rosanne, wearily ironical. "Do tell me something that will make life seem less of an atrocious joke than it is—especially if you oughtn't to tell."

"Well, we're not supposed to breathe anything like this outside the compound walls, you know. Len told me not to mention it to a soul; but I don't expect he meant to include you, for, of course, you are all right."

"Of course!" Rosanne smiled mockingly at herself in the mirror before which she was arranging her hair preparatory to posing her hat upon it.

"Well, my dear, just think! They've discovered a Kafir boy in the compound who has been stealing thousands of pounds' worth of diamonds for months, and passing them to someone outside. They caught him in the act this afternoon."

"How frightfully exciting!" Rosanne had put her hat on now, but was still manoeuvring to get it at exactly the correct angle over her right eye. "How did he do it?"

"He made a little tunnel from under his sleeping-bunk to the outside of the compound wall, about a yard and a half long, and through that he would push a parcel of diamonds by means of a stick with a flat piece of tin at the end of it, something like a little rake and exactly the same length as the tunnel. He always pushed a little heap of earth through first, so as to cover the diamonds up from any eyes but those of his confederate outside. When the confederate had removed the diamonds, he pushed back the earth against the tin rake, which the boy always left in place until he had another packet of diamonds ready to put through. In this way the hole was never exposed, except during the few moments, once a week, when the boy was putting in a fresh packet."

"But how awfully thrilling!" exclaimed Rosanne.

"Yes; isn't it? What they want to do now is to catch the confederate who is, of course, the real culprit, for encouraging an ignorant Kafir to steal."

"Who could it possibly be?"

"Goodness knows! Such heaps of people come inside this outer compound, tradespeople, servants with messages, and so on. But just think of it, Nan! Thousands of pounds' worth, and the Kafir boy only got ten pounds for each packet he pushed through."

"Well, what would a Kafir do with thousands of pounds, anyway?" said Rosanne, laughing irrelevantly. "I think ten pounds was quite enough."

"That's true—too much for the wretch, indeed! However, he has confessed and told everything he could to help our people to trap the other wretch. Unfortunately, that is not very much."

"No?"

"No; he says he has never seen the man who fetches the diamonds. The only one he has ever seen was a man he is not able to describe because he is so ordinary-looking, who came to his kraal in Basutoland about seven months ago, and made the whole plan with him to come and work on contracts of three months at a time as a compound-boy, steal as many diamonds as he could, and pass them out in the way I have described. Each parcel was to cost ten pounds and to contain no less than ten diamonds. No money passed between them, but every time a parcel was put through the tunnel, the confederate on the other side put a blue bead in its place among the sand. The boy found the bead and kept it as a receipt, and when he came out at the end of every three months' contract he wore a bracelet of blue beads on his wrist. Naturally, the authorities didn't take any notice of this when they searched him, for nearly all Kafirs wear beads of some kind. These beads were quite a common kind to look at; only when they were examined carefully were they found to have been passed through some chemical process which dyed the inside a peculiar mauve colour, making it impossible for the Kafir to cheat by adding ordinary blue beads (of which there are plenty for sale in the compound) to his little bunch of 'receipts.'"

"How clever!" said Rosanne. "And how are they going to catch the confederate? Put a trap-parcel, I suppose, and pounce on him when he comes to fetch it?"

She had seated herself again, opposite Kitty, her arms resting on the back of the chair, her face vivid with interest.

"Cleverer than that," announced Kitty. "They are going to put the trap and watch who fetches it. But they won't pounce on him; they mean to follow him up and arrest the whole gang."

"Gang?"

"Len says there's sure to be a gang of them, and for the sake of getting them all, parcel after parcel of stones will be put through the tunnel, if necessary, until every one of them is traced and arrested."

"Rather risky for the diamonds, I should think!"

"They'll only put inferior ones in. Besides, the Kafir boy's contract is up in a week's time, and if all the gang aren't caught by then, they're going to let the boy go out and meet his confederate to deliver his beads, and then the arrest will be made."

"Surely the Kafir was able to describe him, if he had been in the habit of meeting him every three months?"

"He says he was a young white boy, very thin, who wears a mask and an overcoat. They have met twice at night, in an old unused house in the Malay compound, the other side of Kimberley. Can you imagine any one running such awful risks for the sake of diamonds, Nan? But Len says it goes on all the time—this illicit diamond-buying business—and the company loses thousands of pounds every year and is hardly ever able to catch the thieves. They're as clever as paint! They have to be, for if they are caught it means ten to twenty years' imprisonment for them, as they know. Mustn't it be awful to live in such a state of risk and uncertainty, never knowing when you're going to be found out, for, of course, there are plenty of detectives on the watch for illicit buying all the time?"

"Awful—yes, but terribly exciting," Rosanne said musingly. "Don't you think so?" she added quickly, and began to pull on her gloves.

"Ah, don't go, yet!" cried Kitty. "Len will be dreadfully disappointed to find you gone."

"Tell him you told me the story," laughed Rosanne. "That will cheer him up."

"I don't think I shall," said Kitty soberly. "I'm afraid he'd be awfully mad with me, after all, even though it is only you I've told. He'll say women can't keep things to themselves, and that you're sure to tell someone else, and so the whole thing will get about."

"You needn't worry, dear. It will never get about through me," said Rosanne quietly, and, kissing Kitty good-night, she went her ways.

As she passed through the brightly lit outer compound, stepping briskly toward the big gate, she was aware of more than one lurking shadow behind the blue-ground heaps. Also, it seemed to her that various guards were more alert than usual in their guardhouses. But she gave no faintest sign of observing these things, greeted the guard at the gate pleasantly, and, passing out to the street, stepped into the waiting carriage and was driven home. It wanted a few minutes to midnight when she stole from the veranda door of her room once more, dressed in her dim, straight gown of moonlight velvet with a swathe of colourless veil about her head and, sliding softly through the garden, went out into the quiet streets of the town until she came, at last, to a little indistinguished door next to a jeweller's window, whereon was neatly inscribed the name, "Syke Ravenal." On knocking gently three times, the door opened mechanically to admit her. Inside all was dark; but a few paces down a passage brought her to a door that opened into a small but brightly lighted room. An elderly man was seated at a table engaged in beautifully illuminating a parchment manuscript. This was Syke Ravenal.

"You are very late, my child," he said, in a gently benevolent tone. His voice was rich and sonorous.

"It was not safe to come before."

"Safe?" His dark, hawk-like face did not change, but there was a sound in his voice like the clank of broken iron.

"They've caught Hiangeli," she said.

"Ah!" He carefully folded the manuscript between two protecting sheets of blotting-paper and placed it in the drawer of his table. His hands shook as if with ague, but his voice was as perfectly composed as his face when he spoke again.

"Tell me all about it, my child."

"They got him in the compound today, as he was putting the parcel through. He has confessed as much as he knows about your son going to the kraal, and the blue beads, and the old house in the Malay compound where he was paid. They have now set a trap-parcel of stones and are sitting in wait to catch the confederate." She sank down in a chair opposite to him and leaned her elbows on the table. "To catch me," she said slowly.

He looked at her keenly. Her face was deadly pale, but there was no trace of fear in it. Whatever Rosanne Ozanne may have been, she was no coward. Neither was the man opposite her.

"Ah! They have no inkling, of course, that it was you who met Hiangeli and paid him?"

"No; he was not able to tell them any more than that it was a white boy." She added, with the ghost of a smile, "A thin, white boy, in a mask and an overcoat."

"Well, that's all right. They won't catch you, and they won't catch me, and Saul is safe in Amsterdam. Luck is on our side, as she always is on the side of good players. Hiangeli must foot the bill, because he played badly."

Rosanne sat listening. It was plain that Hiangeli's fate was a matter of indifference to her, but some storm was brewing behind her smouldering eyes. Ravenal went on calmly:

"It's been a good game while it lasted. The pity is that it must come to an end."

Then the storm broke forth.

"But it must not come to an end!" she burst out violently. "I can't live without it!"

The man looked at her reflectively.