had been misplaced could alter. This
is a remarkable and indisputable fact. After having rallied around him all
that was honest in South Africa; after having been the petted child of all
the old and influential ladies in Cape Town; after having been accepted as
their leader by men like Mr. Schreiner and Mr. Hofmeyr, who, clever though
they were, and convinced, as they must have been, of their personal
influence on the Dutch party and the members of the Afrikander Bond, still
preferred to subordinate their judgment to Rhodes'; after having enjoyed
such unparalleled confidence, Rhodes had come to be spurned and rejected
politically, but had always kept his place in their hearts. Fate and his
own faults separated him from these people of real weight and influence,
and left him in the hands of those who pretended that they were attached
to him, but who, in reality, cared only for the material advantages that
their constant attendance upon him procured to them. They poisoned his
mind, they separated him from all those who might have been useful to him,
and they profited by the circumstance that the Raid had estranged him from
his former friends to strengthen their own influence upon him, and to
persuade him that those who had deplored the rash act were personal
enemies, wishful for his downfall and disgrace.

CHAPTER IV.

MRS. VAN KOOPMAN

Among those with whom Rhodes had been intimate from almost the first days
of his establishment in Cape Town and his entrance into political life was
a lady who, for something like half a century, had been enjoying an
enviable position throughout almost the whole of South Africa. Mrs. van
Koopman was a Dutchwoman of considerable means and of high character. She
was clever, well read, and her quick intelligence allowed her to hold her
own in discussion upon any subject against the most eminent men of her
generation. She had never made a secret of her Dutch sympathies, nor of
her desire to see her countrymen given equal rights with the English all
over South Africa. She was on excellent terms with President Kruger, and
with President Steyn, whose personality was a far more remarkable one than
that of his old and crafty colleague.

The leading South African political men used to meet at Mrs. van Koopman's
to discuss the current events of the day. It is related that she was one
of the first to bring to the notice of her friends the complications that
were bound to follow upon the dis