e.

"I don't think I shall go back to England," he said, kicking a
sputtering log into place. "I don't see why I should. For business
purposes I am far more useful to the firm in South Africa than in
Throgmorton Street. I have no relation left except a third cousin, and
I have never cared a rush for living in town. That beastly house of
mine in Hill Street will fetch what I gave for it,--Isaacson cabled
about it the other day, offering for furniture and all. I don't want
to go into Parliament, and I hate shooting little birds and tame deer.
I am one of those fellows who are born Colonial at heart, and I don't
see why I shouldn't arrange my life as I please. Besides, for ten
years I have been falling in love with this country, and now I am up to
the neck."

He flung himself back in the camp-chair till the canvas creaked, and
looked at me below his eyelids. I remember glancing at the lines of
him, and thinking what a fine make of a man he was. In his untanned
field-boots, breeches, and grey shirt, he looked the born wilderness
hunter, though less than two months before he had been driving down to
the City every morning in the sombre regimentals of his class. Being a
fair man, he was gloriously tanned, and there was a clear line at his
shirt-collar to mark the limits of his sunburn. I had first known him
years ago, when he was a broker's clerk working on half-commission.
Then he had gone to South Africa, and soon I heard he was a partner in
a mining house which was doing wonders with some gold areas in the
North. The next step was his return to London as the new
millionaire,--young, good-looking, wholesome in mind and body, and much
sought after by the mothers of marriageable girls. We played polo
together, and hunted a little in the season, but there were signs that
he did not propose to become the conventional English gentleman. He
refused to buy a place in the country, though half the Homes of England
were at his disposal. He was a very busy man, he declared, and had not
time to be a squire. Besides, every few months he used to rush out to
South Africa. I saw that he was restless, for he was always badgering
me to go big-game hunting with him in some remote part of the earth.
There was that in his eyes, too, which marked him out from the ordinary
blond type of our countrymen. They were large and brown and
mysterious, and the light of another race was in their odd depths.

To hint such a thing would h