e there too. I may be going up there soon, but have
never been. It is a very wonderful place, is it not?"

"Oh, yes. Miles ahead of any other in South Africa. It hasn't got the
Sleepy Hollow sort of look all these other musty old places have.
English capital and energy have put it in the forefront."

This was no sort of remark to make under the circumstances, and herein
was another instance of May's lack of breeding which would now and again
crop up. It may have been that she was stung by a new discovery which
had been brought home to her with the first utterance. This "ugly Dutch
girl" had a beautiful voice, soft, well modulated, thoroughly refined.

It was a time when people were wont to rave at and wrangle with each
other over the rights and wrongs of the political situation then nearly
at its most acute stage, on far less challenge than May's tone and words
implied. This Dutch girl, however, did nothing of the kind. She went
on talking pleasantly as though no such remark had been made--asking
questions about the place under discussion, and seeming to take a vivid
interest in the answers. Poor May felt very small, very inferior. She
was honest enough to own to herself that she had transgressed against
the laws of good breeding, and to admire the other's self-possession and
ready tact, though, as constituting another attraction, she loved not
the possessor of these qualities any the more.

Then Frank and Jan went out to smoke a pipe or two together, and talk
shop, and about sport, and the latest rumours from the Transvaal--though
this guardedly. The girls, left behind, were chatting, and looking at
things, notably some English fashion papers which May had got out. Then
they, too, took a stroll out to look at May's fowl-houses, and finally
all met at dinner.

There was no lack of conversation. Aletta was telling them about her
experiences at the capital--where none of her hearers, save Frank, had
ever been--moved thereto by many questions from Mrs Wenlock, and all
the good times she had been having--balls, and bicycle picnics, and
Government House receptions, and dances on board one or other of the
warships at Simonstown. May, listening with vivid interest, almost
forgot her ill-humour, only failing where she was reminded of it by
envy. That was the sort of life her own soul hankered after, instead of
being stuck away on a dismal up-country farm. That was life--this
stagnation. Yet could she at tha