king anxiously of the African climate and the desert
hard-ships he was going to face. And she wondered what significance
there might be in the fact that he had written twice during his stay
with her to a Miss Le Breton, whose name, nevertheless, he had not
mentioned in their conversations. Well, he would marry soon, she
supposed, and marry well, in circles out of her ken. With the common
prejudice of the English middle class, she hoped that if this Miss Le
Breton were his choice, she might be only French in name and not
in blood.

Meanwhile, Warkworth sped up to London in high spirits, enjoying the
comforts of a good conscience.

He drove first to his club, where a pile of letters awaited him--some
letters of congratulation, others concerned with the business of his
mission. He enjoyed the first, noticing jealously who had and who had
not written to him; then he applied himself to the second. His mind
worked vigorously and well; he wrote his replies in a manner that
satisfied him. Then throwing himself into a chair, with a cigar, he gave
himself up to the close and shrewd planning of the preparations
necessary for his five weeks' march, or to the consideration of two or
three alternative lines of action which would open before him as soon as
he should find himself within the boundaries of Mokembe. Some five years
before, the government of the day had sent a small expedition to this
Debatable Land, which had failed disastrously, both from the diplomatic
and the military points of view. He went backward and forward to the
shelves of the fine "Service" library which surrounded him, taking down
the books and reports which concerned this expedition. He buried himself
in them for an hour, then threw them aside with contempt. What blunders
and short-sight everywhere! The general public might well talk of the
stupidity of English officers. And blunders so easily avoided, too! It
was sickening. He felt within himself a fulness of energy and
intelligence, a perspicacity of brain which judged mistakes of this kind
unpardonable.

As he was replacing some of the books he had been using in the shelves,
the club began to fill up with men coming in to lunch. A great many
congratulated him; and a certain number who of old had hardly professed
to know him greeted him with cordiality. He found himself caught in a
series of short but flattering conversations, in which he bore himself
well--neither over-discreet nor too elate. "I declare