ity of the feeling Mona
had shown; that a cool, practised head, such as his, should have been
thrown off its level, even for the moment. He had been ill, which might
account for it. Well, he was well now, and awakened from that fantastic
dream. Mona had undoubtedly saved his life by her cool, ready courage;
yet now he hardly felt grateful to her. Possibly, she herself regretted
she had done so now, in that the failure of her efforts would have
spared her the small degree of vexation which might attend her sudden
change of front. Those words, those acts at the time, had been wrung
from her by a certain warm, hysterical superabundance of feeling which
must find an outlet somewhere. This it had found, and the volcano was
quiescent again--until the advent of some fresh cause of eruption; some
_freak_ cause, be it understood. Clearly hers was one of those
surcharged, excitable temperaments, which, craving a new sensation, will
conceive an ardent passion, flaming with fiercely consuming brilliancy
and heat, only to sink, like a burnt-out building, as quickly as it
flared--to die into dark, cold, unprofitable ashes. He had seen such
before--not once, nor twice--and the outcome was ever the same.

He remembered his first instincts with regard to her. Why had he
suffered himself, even partially, to lose sight of them? Well,
fortunate that it was only partially, and there was no harm done. Yet,
after all, he was human.

Few and far between now were his rides out to Suffield's farm, and then
for a visit of but short duration. His spare time he spent mostly in
buck-shooting among the mountains, and his ordinary working time was
now, since the war, pretty full. For her part, Mona seldom came into
Doppersdorp.

But if Roden's visits to the Suffields were infrequent, the same could
not be said for those of Lambert. Quick to perceive the state of
affairs, the young doctor judged his own opportunity to have come round
again, and was not slow to improve it. If Musgrave was out of the
running, now was his own time to chip in, as he put it; and truth to
tell, his efforts in that direction were received very graciously.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I'm surprised at you, Mr Musgrave," said Mrs Van Stolz one evening.
"You are letting the doctor cut you out most completely."

"Cut me out?"

"Yes. He is always at the Suffields' now. I thought when you were
invalided there,