ality. "And here I'm afraid there must be a great deal more fire
than smoke."

"Still I won't believe it. Looking at only one side of the question is
supposed to be a feminine characteristic. It strikes me that our sex
has been libelled."

"That's all very well, Grace, but we've got to be practical. What about
Mona? They are engaged."

"Not actually."

"Well, as good as. It amounts to the same thing."

"I don't know," was the reply, more thoughtfully given. "Speak to her
yourself about it."

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

Mona received the news as though semi-dazed with its ominous magnitude,
and by some curious and subtle instinct believed it. Yet not quite--not
quite the whole of it, that is. The motive was too horrible. In that
she would not believe, unless he assured her to the contrary. Still,
the other was bad enough, whichever way you looked at it. It was
appalling. A gulf, a chasm, seemed to open under her feet, paralysing
her faculties, deadening everything.

Such was the state of the family councils when Roden, resolved to know
the worst, saddled up his horse and started for Quaggasfontein. It was
Sunday morning, so he would have the whole day at his disposal, and as
he cantered out along the familiar track--how many times had he been
over it before?--it was with a very sure foreboding that he was
travelling it now for the last time. And as he journeyed he called to
his aid all the iron hardness of his now schooled nature; a hardness
which he had suffered to be penetrated, though never dispelled, but
which events of late had riveted once more in armour layers. Not upon
any softening reminiscence would he allow his mind to dwell now, and the
very first glance at Mona's face would justify his resolve; justify it
for all time, or--

He was prepared for the constraint with which the Suffields greeted
him--so different to his former welcome--the more marked perhaps because
of a certain laboured effusiveness in order to render it equally
cordial; for even Grace, her first spirited defence of him
notwithstanding, could not quite free her manner from the effect of the
distilling canker-drop of suspicion. He was prepared for this, and at
the moment thought but little of it as he entered with them.

It was a lovely, cloudless morning, and the scent of flowers with the
hum of bees and the chirrup of the cicada wafted in at the open windows
of the co