rong."

"Oh, yes. He is much stronger than he looks."

"And you--you have been all right?"

"Yes, thanks."

"Are you going back to--them?"

"No, I leave to-morrow morning early by the Portuguese boat. I am going
home to be married."

"Indeed! Then I suppose you will wash your hands of Africa for ever?"

"Not quite," he replied. "I told Meredith that I would be prepared to go
up to him in case of emergency, but not otherwise. I shall, of course,
still be interested in the scheme. I take home the first consignment of
Simiacine; we have been very successful, you know. I shall have to stay
in London to sell that. I have a house there."

"Are you to be married at once?" inquired Jocelyn, with that frank
interest which makes it so much easier for a man to talk of his own
affairs to a woman than to one of his own sex.

"As soon as I can arrange it," he answered with a little laugh. "There
is nothing to wait for. We are both orphans, and, fortunately, we are
fairly well off."

He was fumbling in his breast-pocket, and presently he rose, crossed the
room, and handed her, quite without afterthought or self-consciousness,
a photograph in a morocco case.

Explanation was unnecessary, and Jocelyn Gordon looked smilingly upon a
smiling, bright young face.

"She is very pretty," she said honestly.

Whereupon Guy Oscard grunted unintelligibly.

"Millicent," he said after a little pause--"Millicent is her name."

"Millicent?" repeated Jocelyn--"Millicent WHAT?"

"Millicent Chyne."

Jocelyn folded the morocco case together and handed it back to him.

"She is very pretty," she repeated slowly, as if her mind could only
reproduce--it was incapable of creation.

Oscard looked puzzled. Having risen he did not sit down again, and
presently he took his leave, feeling convinced that Jocelyn was about to
faint.

When he was gone the girl sat wearily down.

"Millicent Chyne," she whispered. "What is to be done?"

"Nothing," she answered to herself after a while. "Nothing. It is not my
business. I can do nothing."

She sat there--alone, as she had been all her life--until the short
tropical twilight fell over the forest. Quite suddenly she burst into
tears.

"It IS my business," she sobbed. "It is no good pretending otherwise;
but I can do nothing."

CHAPTER XXII. THE SECOND CONSIGNMENT

Who has lost all hope has also lost all fear.

Among others, it was a strange thing that Jocelyn felt no surprise