that I might have been the unconscious cause of deepening it, or at any
rate that you thought I had been. So I think I will find some excuse
and--move on."

Edala softened. She was really fond of the other, and did not, in her
heart of hearts, wish to see the last of her.

"No, you won't, Evelyn," she answered with characteristic decisiveness.
"You'll stay where you are. Never mind me. If I said anything beastly
I'm more than sorry."

What Thornhill had half welcomed in advance had come about. Edala was
jealous. All that she might have done for her father, and had neglected
to do, was done by their visitor. Did he want anything found for him--
from some article mislaid, to some quotation in the course of his
recreative studies--Evelyn was the one to do it, not Edala. Or did he
want a companion in his semi-professional rides about the farm, Evelyn
never by any chance refused or made excuse, but Edala often did, not
only of late but when they had been alone together. In short, at every
turn he met with far more consideration from this stranger than from his
own child.

The incident which had led to the present discussion had occurred the
day before, and was of just such a nature. Edala did not care to go
out; it was too hot; besides, she had something else to do. But Evelyn
had made no such excuse.

"I'm afraid I'm straining your good nature to cracking point," Thornhill
had more than once remarked on such occasions. "It's rather more
cheerful having some one with you than not, but I believe you never say
`No' because you think it a duty not to."

"In that case a duty becomes a pleasure," she had answered with a laugh.

Now of late Edala had been set thinking, and as the result of her
searchings of heart a certain soreness had set in. Their visitor seemed
to be taking her place, and yet she could not blame the visitor. If she
would not do things for her father herself she could not fairly blame
another person for doing them instead; yet none the less did she feel
sore.

But since the incident at the wind-up of the bushbuck hunt the
estrangement had widened. That her father had intended to shoot
Manamandhla dead, she entertained not the slightest doubt. In the first
place a man of his judgment could by no possibility be guilty of such a
clumsy blunder as mistaking a human being for a buck under any
circumstances whatever. In the next place the expression of his
countenance had told its own tale