"I cannot promise anything," she stammered, drawing her hand away.

"I do not ask you to…​ yet," was his answer, but the ring remained with her, and she knew it was part of the bargain. When she opened the case she was furious with herself, for it was a ring that could not escape note—​a great single stone, amber coloured, set in a band of violet enamel.

They were all dining at Government House that night, and she wore it, striving to hide its brilliance amongst a number of other stones, but it glared out yellow and baleful as a tiger’s eye. Lady Angela was the first to spot it.

"What a glorious stone! I do so love a yellow diamond. Is it out of the famous Montague mine, or a mere de Beer’s? Journalism must pay, dear Viwie!"

She gave a little silvery laugh that rippled up Vivienne’s spine like an asp, and left a poisoned wound.

Neither did a conversation carried on at her right in full hearing act as an antidote. A Judge of the High Court was telling his dinner neighbour what a charming fellow de Windt was, and how they would all miss him when he pulled out for the North.

"The country can’t afford to lose men like that! But they are real lovers of the wild and won’t stay when we begin to get too civilised."

"Yet de Windt himself is one of the most civilised fellows I’ve ever met," said the Administrator. "When all Colonials are like him, Africa will begin to move."

"A Colonial? Pas possible!" cried a woman.

"It is possible though. He was born out here and spite of Harrow and Oxford and a place at the Bar, Africa has him in her maw for good."

"The dear fellow would have been here to-night, if he had not been so ill," said the hostess. And the wretched Vivienne was thankful she had been spared that ordeal at least. But she held fast to her plan. What matter whether de Windt were a splendid fellow or not? Since he loved the wild, all the better for him—​he wouldn’t miss his gold mine! She felt herself growing harder and harder every moment.

"Millionaires must be made of tough stuff," she thought sardonically. "Fine fellows! I expect I shall begin to look like one soon. Eyes like flint with pouches under them, and a tiger trap for a mouth! Zut, alors!"

Thanks to Lady Angela the news was all over Buluwayo the next day that she was wearing Montague’s ring. Even the fact that Cornwall came bearing propitious tidings did little to quench Vivienne’s rage.

"It’s all right," he said. "De Windt will take your offer. The other people are keen as mustard and want to go higher, but he says he wouldn’t sell to them at any price."

"I want it fixed up at once," she said feverishly.

"As soon as you like. He asked me to hustle it along too, in case you changed your mind. The poor fellow has had a bad go of fever, but the news quite cheered him up, and he’ll be about in a day or two. He seems greatly pleased at your wanting the place."

Vivienne was assailed by a choking sensation, and a bitter flavour came into her mouth, but she knew that as a prospective millionaire she must get accustomed to such discomforts. They were part of the training. As also was the skilful fencing she began to practise on the unsuspecting Montague. Certainly it was a case of Greek meeting Greek, but sometimes it seemed to her more like a duel between a sucking dove and a serpent. And she was not the dove. A London journalist had once said to her that he believed all women were natural-born crooks, and now she began to believe it.

"The black drop was in me all the time," she thought bitterly. "But it has taken Africa to bring it out!"

Although the negotiations for the sale went forward apace, they were not pushed on fast enough to please her, and she almost worried Cornwall out of his wits in her determination to have the thing signed and sealed before de Windt was well enough to get about. She did not yet feel quite hardened enough in the ways of millionaires to be able to face over a deed of sale the man whose gold she was stealing.

Another miserable part of the transaction was the receiving of Wolfe Montague’s cheque. That was a bad moment. The paper burnt her hand like flame. But she examined it carefully, and pulled Montague up sharply when she found that it was drawn on a local Bank.

"That would never do," she said firmly. "I cannot have my affairs all over Buluwayo."

"I thought you wanted it for immediate use," he replied suavely, "and Banks don’t talk."

"I wouldn’t trust them," she averred; "I give my confidence to few." But she smiled her confidence in him at least with such lovely eyes that he went away with content in his heart to arrange the matter on such lines as only millionaires can command. Forty-eight hours later the money was to hand by cabled draft from London on the Standard Bank, Buluwayo.

The same morning Vivienne went for the first time to look at the farm. Montague’s carriage was at her disposal as usual, and by the aid of a small local map she was able to direct the groom. They calculated that the distance there and back could be easily covered in a couple of hours, and that she could get back in plenty of time to prepare for a ball which the magistrate was giving that night in the Court House.

The farm lay out towards the Matopos, along a dusty, sun-baked road, but Vivienne, well shaded in the luxuriously cushioned body of the carriage noticed neither dust nor heat. The excitement of the gamble for money was in her veins, and she was telling herself how good a substitute it made for happiness. The flickering glance of envious hatred Lady Angela had shot at her from under a white umbrella on the sidewalk was part of the game that she was in now, up to her nostrils—​the game which, though the weapons were sheathed in silk and the blows prepared behind honeyed smiles, was just the same old sweet game, governed by the same old sweet law, that was in the beginning and shall be in the end—​the law of Club and Fang!