aughed at her words--a deep, round
chuckle it was.

"It didn't exactly hang itself; it lay over the back of a Chesterfield
where I could see it and breakfast too."

"A Chesterfield in a breakfast-room! That's more like the furniture of
a boudoir."

"Well, it was a boudoir." He blushed a little in spite of himself.

"Ah!... Al'mah's? Well, she owed you a breakfast, at least, didn't she?"

"Not so good a breakfast as I got."

"That is putting rather a low price on her life," she rejoined; and a
little smile of triumph gathered at her pink lips; lips a little like
those Nelson loved not wisely yet not too well, if love is worth while
at all.

"T didn't see where you were leading me," he gasped, helplessly. "I
give up. I can't talk in your way."

"What is my way?" she pleaded with a little wave of laughter in her
eyes.

"Why, no frontal attacks--only flank movements, and getting round the
kopjes, with an ambush in a drift here and there."

"That sounds like Paul Kruger or General Joubert," she cried in mock
dismay. "Isn't that what they are doing with Dr. Jameson, perhaps?"

His face clouded. Storm gathered slowly in his eyes, a grimness
suddenly settled in his strong jaw. "Yes," he answered, presently,
"that's what they will be doing; and if I'm not mistaken they'll catch
Jameson just as you caught me just now. They'll catch him at Doornkop
or thereabouts, if I know myself--and Oom Paul."

Her face flushed prettily with excitement. "I want to hear all about
this empire-making, or losing, affair; but there are other things to be
settled first. There's my opera-cloak and the breakfast in the prima
donna's boudoir, and--"

"But, how did you know it was Al'mah?" he asked blankly.

"Why, where else would my cloak be?" she inquired with a little laugh.
"Not at the costumier's or the cleaner's so soon. But, all this horrid
flippancy aside, do you really think I should have talked like this, or
been so exigent about the cloak, if I hadn't known everything; if I
hadn't been to see Al'mah, and spent an hour with her and knew that she
was recovering from that dreadful shock very quickly? But could you
think me so inhuman and unwomanly as not to have asked about her?"

"I wouldn't be in a position to investigate much when you were
talking--not critically," he replied, boldly. "I would only be thinking
that everything you said was all right. It wouldn't occur to me to--"

She half closed her eyes, looking at him wit