odern Rhodesia, she merely
asserted she was going into the wilderness to please them, and in
return they must put up with her in any sort of garb she chose. In the
end Meryl was persuaded to have a knickerbocker garb also, though she
insisted that she would never wear it. Aunt Emily bought yards and
yards of green and blue muslin, in which she proposed to tie up her
head. "You must have a particularly ugly helmet, and a pair of smoked
spectacles, and a butterfly-net as well," said Diana, "and then you
will look as if you belonged to the British Association."

Her uncle, sitting back silently in his big arm-chair, with the quiet
twinkle in his keen eyes, remarked, "And you will look like the
principal boy at a pantomime."

"How heavenly!..." said outspoken Diana, and Aunt Emily raised her
hands in horror.

It was on one of the last evenings before their final departure that
William van Hert came from a quiet sea-side place above Durban to see
them. He was taking a long rest there, after a strenuous parliamentary
campaign, and only discovered through a belated newspaper that they
had returned from England, and were contemplating a journey north. He
immediately took a day's road journey to the nearest railway and
departed for Johannesburg.

Diana saw him arrive, and executed a remarkable spring into the air,
finished off with a little kick. "Oh, golly!..." she breathed. "Here's
Dutch Willy come flying to the arms of his ladylove!"

Meryl looked up with swift, questioning eyes.

"Impossible!... He is down at M'genda."

"A little bird whispered, 'She, the fair one of many millions, has
returned,' and straightway the thousand white arms of M'genda failed
to hold him."

"Don't be spiteful, Di. Mr. van Hert cares nothing for anyone's
millions. You know it well."

"I do; and for that reason he should be kept in a glass case. Still,
he cares for a fair Englishwoman who has been--well, kind to him."

"He is interesting. Was there any special kindness in letting him know
that I had the perspicacity to see it?" And they went downstairs
together to receive him.

William van Hert was at that time one of the most disliked, one of the
most attractive, and one of the most disturbing men in South Africa.
Gifted with brains and polish, he was yet, at present, marred by
bigotry, narrowness of vision, and an unreasonable antipathy to the
advance of English ways and customs. Furthermore, having obtained for
himself a considerab