might have seen, for Eustace was far too prudent to send
anything more meaning into a house full of other people, and a small and
crowded house at that. The mere glance of an eye--purely accidental,
but still a mere glance--on the part of a third person, no matter who,
would be more than sufficient to tumble down his fair house of cards in
great and irreparable ruin. He was not a man to take any such risks.

She had appreciated his caution--at first. But, as time went by, the
black drop of a terrible suspicion distilled within her heart. What if
he had begun to think differently! What if he had suffered himself to
be carried away by a mere moment of passing passion! What if time and
absence had opened his eyes! Oh, it was too terrible! It could not be.
Yet such things had happened--were happening every day.

An awful sense of desolation was upon her. She hungered for his
presence--for the sound of his voice--for even a scrap of paper
containing one loving word which his hand had written. To this had the
serene, proud, strong-natured woman come. Her love had humbled her to
the dust. Thus do we suffer through those for whom we transgress--thus
does the delight of an hour become the scourge of a year.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

"A MADNESS OF FAREWELLS."

One afternoon Eanswyth managed to steal away for a solitary ramble
unperceived. In the joy of having actually succeeded, she had wandered
some little distance from the settlement. She felt not the slightest
fear. No Kafirs would be in the least likely to molest her so near a
strongly garrisoned post, even if the tribes in the immediate
neighbourhood had been in a state of open hostility, which was not at
present the case. As for solitude, it was not complete enough, for the
country was open and sweeping and there were always horsemen in sight,
coming and going in the distance, along the main road.

Half unconsciously she walked in the direction of her deserted home. It
was a lovely, cloudless afternoon and the sun was already beginning to
slant towards his western bed, darting long rays of gleaming gold upon
the wide, rolling plains, throwing out with photographic clearness the
blue outlines of the distant hills. Crickets chirruped gleefully in the
grass, and away down in the hollow a pair of blue cranes were stalking
mincingly along, uttering their metallic, but not unmelodious, cry.

Suddenly the clink of a horse's hoof smote upon her ear. It was
a