livelihood. No more thought of love. That was a
luxury as far beyond me now as a country seat or a town house. The
rose-hued dream must disappear, dispelled by an irruption of dank and
gloomy fog. I was practically a beggar.

Beryl was coming home to-morrow, but to me that meant nothing now. Yet
how could I go through the anguish of dwelling beneath the same roof
with her day after day, month after month, knowing that she was lost to
me, for, of course, now I could never tell her. And then, as if to
render the mockery more diabolically complete, a sort of consciousness
came over me that had I spoken sooner she would have refused now to give
me back my troth. She was of the stuff who would stand by a man through
ill as well as through good. Well, it was too late now. The
opportunity had gone--gone for ever.

Had this blow overtaken me earlier, or even now had I never known Beryl
Matterson, it would have been bad enough. Now it had fallen with
tenfold force--with a force that crushed. A wild eerie temptation came
over me, as my glance rested upon the gun which stood against a boulder.
This kloof had so recently witnessed one tragedy, why not another?
There was nothing left in life, and in my then frame of mind I could
imagine nothing worse in the hereafter than the veritable agony I was
now undergoing. Indeed, so sharp was the temptation that I have a
recollection of resolutely throwing all my cartridges over the krantz.
Further, I remember walking with a sort of dazed stagger as I made my
way over to where my horse had strayed some twenty yards, and was
placidly cropping the grass, the bridle trailing on the ground.

Well, the situation had to be faced. I must pull myself together and
make the best of it--which sounds an excellent, hard-headed, common
sense, even cheery, way of looking at things, as a theory. At any rate,
I kept repeating it over and over again to myself during that homeward
ride and afterwards. But, alternating with it, in jangling refrain, was
gloomy, hopeless, desperate fact--Ruined! Penniless! Beggared!

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

TURNS OF THE KNIFE.

"Hullo, Kenrick. What's the row?" sang out Brian, even before he had
got down from the driving seat. "Man, but you do look sick."

"He just does," echoed Iris from the back, herself as yet hardly
visible.

A stranger who had been seated beside Brian now got down.

"Mr Holt, isn't it?" he said. "Glad to meet you. I've heard