to feel angry with her. Yet, somehow,
she could not--no, not even when she thought to detect a suspicious
heave of the shoulders which denoted a powerful fund of compressed
laughter. With the absent object of her intended "straight talk" she
felt venomously savage. With this one--no, she could not.

"Well, what I want to say is this," she went on. "Nidia, is it fair to
encourage that man as you do?"

"Which man? There are so many men. Do I encourage them?"

"Oh, child, don't be so wildly exasperating. You know perfectly well
who I mean."

Then Nidia lifted her eyes with a gleam of delightful mischief in them.

"I have a notion you are ungrammatical, Govvie. I am almost sure you
ought to have said `_whom_ I mean.' Well, we won't be particular about
that. But, as my American adorer, `Major' Shackleton, would say, `Oh,
do drive on,' By the way, is he the man I am encouraging?"

What was to be done with such a girl as this? But Susie Bateman was not
to be put off.

"You know perfectly well that I mean John Ames."

"Oh! Now you're talking, as my `Major' aforesaid would rejoin. And so
I encourage John Ames, do I? Poor fellow! he seems to need it."

There was an unconscious softness wherewith these words were uttered.
It drove the other frantic, "Need it indeed! On the contrary, what he
needs is discouragement, and plenty of it. Well, he gets it from me, at
any rate."

"Oh yes, he does," came the softly spoken interpolation.

"Well, but, Nidia, how much further is this thing to go? Why, the man
comes here and talks to you as if you belonged to him; has a sort of
taken-possession-of-you way about him that it's high time to put an end
to."

"And if he had not `taken possession' of me in that ghastly place on the
Umgwane, and kept it ever since, where would I be now?" came the placid
rejoinder.

"Yes, I know. That is where the mischief came in. It was partly my
fault for ever encouraging the man's acquaintance. I might have known
he would be dangerous. There is that about him so different to the
general run of them that would make him that way to one like yourself,
Nidia. Yes; I blame myself."

"Yes; he is different to the general ruck, isn't he?" rejoined Nidia,
with a softness in her wide-opened eyes that rather intensified than
diminished the bitterness of her friend and mentor.

"Well, at any rate he is nobody in particular," flashed out the latter,
"and probably hasn't got a shilling