aw violent and vulgar scenes ahead. Mrs.
van Cannan, now that her true colours were unmasked, and it was no
longer worth while to play the soft, sleepy role behind which she hid
her fierce nature, would stick at nothing to get rid of Christine and
set the whole world against her. Though the girl's resolution held
firm, a dull despair filled her. How vile and cruel life could be!
Friendship was a mockery; love, disillusion and ashes; nothing held
sweet and true but the hearts of little children. An arid conclusion
for a girl from whom the gods had not withdrawn those two surpassing
and swiftly passing gifts--youth and beauty.

"To be a cynic at twenty-two!" she thought bitterly, and looked at her
white, ringless hands. "I must have loved my kind even better than
Chamfort, who said that no one who had loved his kind well could fail
to be a misanthrope at forty. And I thought I had left it all behind
in civilized England! Cruelty, falseness, treachery! But they are
everywhere. Even here, on a South African farm in the heart of a
desert, I find them in full bloom."

She bowed her head in her hands and strove for peace and forgetfulness,
if for that night only. In the end, she found calmness at least, by
reciting softly to herself the beautiful Latin words of her creed.
Then she arose and took the candle in her hand for a final look at the
children before she retired. The day had been terrible and full of
surprises, but fate had reserved a last and staggering one for this
hour. Roddy's bed was empty!

The shock of the discovery dazed her for a moment. It was too horrible
to think that she had been sitting there all this time, wasting
precious moments, while Roddy was--where? O God, where, and in what
cruel hands on this night of fierce storm and stress? When was it that
he had gone? Why had not Meekie been at her post as usual? She caught
up the light and ran from the nursery into one room after another of
the house.

All was silent. The servants were gone, the rooms empty. No sound but
the pitiless battering of the rain without. At last she came to Isabel
van Cannan's room and rapped sharply. There was no answer, and she
made no bones about turning the door-handle, for this was no time for
ceremony. But the bedroom, though brightly lighted, was empty. She
did not enter, but stood in the doorway, searching with her eyes every
corner and place that could conceivably hide a small boy. But there
was