himself back in his cab and smoked his cigar he
cursed vigorously. "Damn the cursed half-breed of a fellow! He's clever
enough, and all that; but what the devil Helen can see in him to make
me invite him down to Te Ariri I don't know. Curse her infernal twaddle
about the rights of humanity and such fustian. Once you are my wife, my
sweet, romantic cousin, I'll knock all that idiotic bosh on the head.
It's bad enough to sit in the House and listen to this fellow frothing,
without having to bring a quarter-bred savage into one's own family.
However, he's really not a man to be ashamed of, so far as appearances
go.... And I must humour her. Five thousand a year must be humoured."

*****

"Well, Helen, and what do you think of your savage?" said Mrs.
Torringley to her niece, late the following evening, as she came to the
door of Helen's room before she said good-night.

The girl was lying on a couch at the further end of the room, looking
through the opened window out into the shadows of the night. The pale,
clear-cut face flushed. "I like him very much, auntie. And I have been
thinking."

"Thinking of what, dear?"

"Wondering if my father ever thought, when he was leading his men
against the Maoris, of the cruel, dreadful wrong he was helping to
perpetrate."

"'Cruel'! 'dreadful'! My dear child, what nonsense you talk! They were
bloodthirsty savages."

"Savages! True. But savages fighting for all that was dear to them--for
their lands, their lives, their liberties as a people. Oh, auntie, when
I read of the awful deeds of bloodshed that are even now being done in
Africa by English soldiers, it makes me sicken. Oh, if I were only a
man, I would go out into the world and----"

"My dear child," said the older lady, with a smile, "you must not read
so much of--of Tolstoy and other horrible writers like him. What would
Lionel say if he thought you were going to be a Woman with a Mission?
Good-night, dear, and don't worry about the Maoris. Many of them
are real Christians nowadays, and nearly all the women can sew quite
nicely."

Outside on the broad gravelled walk the young doctor talked to himself
as he paced quickly to and fro. "Folly, folly, folly. What interest can
she have in me, except that I have native blood in my veins, and that
her father fought our people in the Waikato thirty years ago?"

*****

Brewster had gone back to town for a day or two; but as he bade his aunt
and cousin goodbye, he warmly seco