mantic."

The Colonel grunted.

"More rheumatic than romantic I should have thought. Better have a glass
of grog."

Nan screwed up her bright face with a laugh.

"Heaven forbid, dad! And on a night like this. Oh, bother! Is that a
letter for me?"

Colonel Everard was pointing to an envelope on the mantelpiece. She
crossed the hall without eagerness, and picked it up.

"I've had one, too," said the Colonel, after a brief pause, speaking with
a jerk as if the words insisted upon being uttered in spite of him.

"You!" Nan paused with one finger already inserted in the flap. "What
for?"

Her father was staring steadily at the end of his cigar, or he might have
seen a hint of panic in her dark eyes.

"You will see for yourself," he said, still in that uncomfortable, jerky
style. "He seems to think--Well, I must say it sounds reasonable enough
since he can't get back at present; but you will see for yourself."

A little tremor went through Nan as she opened the letter. With frowning
brows she perused it.

It did not take long to read. The thick, upright writing was almost
arrogantly distinct, recalling the writer with startling vividness.

He had written with his accustomed brevity, but there was much more than
usual in his letter. He saw no prospect, so he told her, of being able
to leave the country for some time to come. Affairs were unsettled, and
likely to remain so. At the same time, there was no reason, now that her
health was restored, that she should not join him, and he was writing to
ask her father to take her out to him. He would meet them at Cape Town,
and if the Colonel cared to do so he would be very pleased if he would
spend a few months with them.

The plan was expressed concisely but with absolute kindness. Nevertheless
there was about the letter a certain tone of mastery which gave Nan very
clearly to understand that the writer thereof did not expect to be
disappointed. It was emphatically the letter of a husband to his wife,
not of a lover to his beloved.

She looked up from it with a very blank face.

"My dear dad!" she ejaculated. "What can he be thinking of?"

Colonel Everard smiled somewhat ruefully.

"You, apparently," he said, with an effort to speak lightly. "What shall
we say to him--eh, Nan? You'll like to go on the spree with your old dad
to take care of you."

"Spree!" exclaimed Nan. And again in a lower key, with a still finer
disdain: "Spree! Well"--tearing the letter ac