“Wagons and carts in South Africa don’t arrive like express trains, Miss Marnham,” said Anscombe, “so you shouldn’t be offended.”

“I am not at all offended, Mr. Anscombe.  Now that I know there is nothing the matter with my father I’m—­But, tell me, how did you get your wound?”

So he told her with much amusing detail after his fashion.  She listened quietly with a puckered up brow and only made one comment.  It was,—­

“I wonder what white man told those Sekukuni Kaffirs that you were coming.”

“I don’t know,” he answered, “but he deserves a bullet through him somewhere above the ankle.”

“Yes, though few people get what they deserve in this wicked world.”

“So I have often thought.  Had it been otherwise, for example, I should have been—­”

“What would you have been?” she asked, considering him curiously.

“Oh! a better shot than Mr. Allan Quatermain, and as beautiful as a lady I once saw in my youth.”

“Don’t talk rubbish before luncheon,” I remarked sternly, and we all laughed, the first wholesome laughter that I had heard at the Temple.  For this young lady seemed to bring happiness and merriment with her.  I remember wondering what it was of which her coming reminded me, and concluding that it was like the sight and smell of a peach orchard in full bloom stumbled on suddenly in the black desert of the burnt winter veld.

After this we became quite friendly.  She dilated on her skill in having produced the Temple from an old engraving, which she fetched and showed to us, at no greater an expense than it would have cost to build an ordinary house.

“That is because the marble was at hand,” said Anscombe.

“Quite so,” she replied demurely.  “Speaking in a general sense one can do many things in life—­if the marble is at hand.  Only most of us when we look for marble find sandstone or mud.”

“Bravo!” said Anscombe, “I have generally lit upon the sandstone.”

“And I on the mud,” she mused.

“And I on all three, for the earth contains marble and mud and sandstone, to say nothing of gold and jewels,” I broke in, being tired of silence.

But neither of them paid much attention to me.  Anscombe did say, out of politeness, I suppose, that pitch and subterranean fires should be added, or some such nonsense.

Then she began to tell him of her infantile memories of Hungary, which were extremely faint; of how they came this place and lived first of all in two large Kaffir huts, until suddenly they began to grow rich; of her school days at Maritzburg; of the friends with whom she had been staying, and I know not what, until at last I got up and went out for a walk.

When I returned an hour or so later they were still talking, and so continued to do until Dr. Rodd arrived upon the scene.  At first they did not see him, for he stood at an angle to them, but I saw him and watched his face with a great deal of interest.  It, or rather its expression, was not pleasant; before now I have seen something like it on that of a wild beast which thinks that it is about to be robbed of its prey by a stronger wild beast, in short, a mixture of hate, fear and jealousy—­especially jealousy.  At the last I did not wonder, for these two seemed to be getting on uncommonly well.