if the worst comes to the worst, she has a medicine to protect
herself with, the same that she so nearly used in the slave camp. Now,
what do you say?"

Leonard thought for a moment, while the dying man watched his face
anxiously.

"It is a heavy responsibility," he said, "and the circumstances make it
an awkward one. But I accept it. I will take care of her as though she
were my wife, or--my daughter."

"Thank you for that," answered Rodd. "I believe you, and as to the
relationship, you will settle that for yourselves. And now good-bye. I
like you. I wish that we had known one another before I got into trouble
at home, became a Zambesi trader, and--a drunkard."

Leonard took the hand which Mr. Rodd lifted with a visible effort, and
when he released it, it fell heavily, like the hand of a dead man. Then,
as he turned to go, he glanced at Juanna's face, but could make nothing
of it, for it was as the face of a sphinx.

There the girl sat, her back resting against the wall, her dying
father's head pillowed upon her knee, motionless as if carved in stone.
She was staring straight before her with eyes wide open and curved
lips set apart, as though she were about to speak and suddenly had been
stricken to silence. So still was she that Leonard could scarcely note
any movement of her breast. Even her eyelids had ceased to quiver, and
the very pallor of her face seemed fixed like that of a waxen image. He
wondered what she was thinking of; but even had she been willing to bare
her thoughts to him, it is doubtful whether she could have made them
intelligible. Her mind was confused, but two things struggled one
against the other within it, the sense of loss and the sense of shame.

The father whom, notwithstanding his faults, she loved dearly, who
indeed had been her companion, her teacher, her playmate and her friend,
the dearest she had known, lay dying before her eyes, and with his last
breath he consigned her to the care of the man whom she loved, and from
whom, as she believed, she was for ever separated. Would there, then, be
no end to the obligations under which she laboured at the hands of this
stranger, who had suddenly taken possession of her life? And what fate
was on her that she should thus be forced into false positions, whence
there was no escape?

Did she wish to escape even? Juanna knew not; but as she sat there
with a sphinx-like face, trouble and doubt, and many another fear and
feeling, took so firm