"Yes, Kerry," she said simply, "I will follow you to the end of the world and the end of life."

De Windt was no man of half actions. Within half an hour, Brunton had been beguiled into consent and Mrs Brunton let into the secret. A long residence had bestowed upon the latter a taste for romance and a heart prepared for anything in the shape of adventure that came along. She threw herself rapturously into the preparations for an after-midnight marriage, and sent her own maid for enough things from Vivienne’s hotel to make up a hasty travelling trousseau; the remaining luggage was to be sent for the next day. One or two very favoured guests being intimate friends of de Windt’s were let into the secret and allowed to stay, the rest went home all unsuspecting and never knew the news until next morning.

The amazing thing was that Montague was one of those who stayed. Vivienne had accomplished a short interview with him, and returned him those things which were his with a brief resume of the situation. To do him justice, he took it like a man, as well he might, when he was like to come out of the affair richer by several hundreds of thousands. For de Windt would accept no other solution of the money tangle than that Montague take possession of the farm and all its treasures. In return, he accepted the loan of Montague’s carriage in which to carry Vivienne away to her new life.

In one of the small, sweet, exquisitely fresh hours before dawn they were set down and left alone on the wide and empty veld. The dusty road along which they had come was beautified by wraith-like rays from a passing moon. Purple rocks had put on a silvery sheen. The white radiant stars burned like jewels in the blue veil of heaven. Far hills and shadowy trees rose silent and salient against the sky. The spot where the waggons lay outspanned was close to de Windt’s old farm, in the same area of brooding peace Vivienne had visited the day before—​but with how different a mood! Then, Life had tasted bitterer between her lips than the aloes of Death. Now, her heart was clean of guile as a white rose, and she was a red and glowing rose whose fragrance intoxicated them both with the divine madness of love. Old Africa took them to her breast and they became part of her.

CHAPTER THREE.

COMMON OR GARDEN EARTH.

There always seems to be more ardour and vitality in blue-eyed people than in others, and Diane Heywood and Maryon Hammond were both blue-eyed—​with a difference. His were blue as the inner light of a glacier, with something of the ice’s quality in their steady stare—​a fighter’s eyes, hard as a rock that you cannot break with an axe; the kind of eyes that women forgive anything to. Indeed Hammond had spent most of his thirty-eight years sinning against women, and they forgave him even unto seventy times seven; and that was as far as the Holy Scriptures entered into the matter. Like Napoleon he was a little fellow when it came to measurements, but so alert, high-headed, and graceful that no one would have guessed him to be something under five-foot eight, and he had the swiftest, most silent feet in Africa, whether for dancing, running, leaping, tracking a lion, or kicking a nigger. A copper complexion bestowed upon him by the land he loved, and a small tan-coloured moustache above a somewhat traplike mouth made up the rest of his equipment. It may be gathered that he was no beauty; but he was "the captain of his soul," such at it was, and he carried himself as though the gods had elected him to be one of the eternal captains of the earth.

Diane Heywood’s eyes were long and deep and cool with shadows in them like the shadows under far hills on a hot day, and that should have been enough for any woman; but the gods had been good to her and added a slim little nose that grew straight out of her forehead like a Greek woman’s, dragging her upper lip so high that there seemed nothing of it except a red curve above another red curve and a short firm chin with a cleft in it. It was hard to tell what in all these soft curves and dimples should suggest a pride of spirit almost insolent, a scorn of all things that were not high and clear and noble. It might have been something in the tilt of her head, the turn of her mouth, or the unflickering character of the shadows in her eyes; but whatever or wherever its origin it was there for all men to read, and not the least of her attractions when read; for all men, whether they know it or not, love that quality of pride in women, recognising, dimly or clearly according to their natures, that on it is based all fine and great things in the generation to come.

However, if instead of possessing the beauty of a May Day Miss Heywood had been the dullest and plainest of girls she would still have enjoyed, for a time at least, the rather enchanting experience of having all the men in Fort Salisbury buzzing about her like bees round a rose on a June morning, and every woman hanging on her lips as if she were the Oracle of Thebes. For she had come straight from England and the charm of "home" still hung about her even as the colour of "home" stayed in her cheeks. She had seen fields—​little square fields with hedges growing round them, and buttercups growing in them—​plucked blackberries and cowslips, ridden to hounds in the Black Vale; heard the jingle of hansom bells, and 'busses rumbling on asphalt, and the boom of Big Ben; tasted London fog, smelt the Thames; seen Charles the First riding down Whitehall, and Nelson’s cocked hat lost in the mist. She, the latest comer, had seen and done and heard all or any of these dear and desirable things later than any of the homesick exiles in Salisbury; therefore was she most dear and desirable beyond all things that be.

"She was London, she was Torment, she was Town."

There were in Rhodesia women whom men loved or reverenced or tolerated or disliked or desired as the case might be, but, for the time being, one and all of these were neglected and forgotten for the society of "the girl from home."

Five men were on the verge of proposing to her—​one of whom by the way was already engaged—​when suddenly Maryon Hammond with his dog Boston at his heels dropped up from his mining camp out beyond Mazoe. And when "Marie" Hammond set his gay, bad eyes on a woman’s face, and his feet on the path that led to that woman’s heart, the other men were just wise enough to drop out of the running and pretend they didn’t mind.

Like all great passions, it did not take long to come to a head—​only a few afternoon rides across the short springy veld grass, a few moonlit evenings with music in the house and loungers in the verandahs, a supper or two up in the old Kopje Fort, and then the ball got up by Hammond and his cronies at the club.

When, after the fifth waltz, Diane Heywood came into the ballroom from the dim verandah where she had been sitting-out a dance with Maryon Hammond, her eyes were like two violets that had been plucked at dawn with the mists of the night still on them. She had the lovely dewy look of a girl who has been kissed in the darkness by the man she loves; a girl whose heart has waked up and found itself beating in a woman’s breast.

They had known each other only a week, but it was plain to see what had come to them. She wore the news in her parted lips, her tinted cheeks, and the little rumple of her hair. He walked as one whom the gods had chosen to honour, pride-of-life written across his face, yet in his eyes a humility curious in Maryon Hammond. He had met his Waterloo.

Some of the women gave little sighs, not in envy so much as in a kind of sadness that certain beautiful things only come once in each woman’s life, however much she may try and repeat or give base imitations of them; and most men felt a sort of warmth in their veins as they looked at those two radiant beings. But a number of people merely contented themselves with feeling extremely glad that the career of Maryon Hammond as a pirate in love was at an end.

For it must here be admitted that the spectacle of a woman holding out her soul in both hands for Maryon Hammond to play with, or walk over, or throw into the fires that burn and consume not, was not an altogether novel one to some at least of those present; it had been witnessed before in various parts of Africa—​and the entertainment, it may be mentioned, is not a pretty one when the man concerned is not worrying particularly about souls. People said that Marie Hammond took toll of women’s souls for something a woman had once done to his own, long ago in his own country America; but none knew the rights of the story.

Then there was his friendship with the beautiful Cara de Rivas. No one had been quite sure how far, if at all, her soul had entered into that matter; but it was certain that tongues had been set a-wagging, for Maryon Hammond’s friendship was a dangerous if fascinating thing for a woman to possess, unless she happened to be the woman he was going to marry. And Cara de Rivas was already married. That was the trouble. For Nick de Rivas, a big, handsome, if slightly morose fellow was plainly something less than sympathetic with his wife’s mid-summer madness; even though, until Hammond called his attention to the matter, he had appeared to be blind and indifferent to the fact that he had a pretty and charming wife.

There had been considerable relief felt when de Rivas in spite of his home and large mining interests being in Mashonaland suddenly decided to take his wife away on a trip to England.

"And no bones broken," sighed Rhodesians, though they sought in vain for confirmation of that or any other legend in the stony stare of Maryon Hammond. They were a romantic people those Rhodesians in the far-off days of 1896, with no rooted objection to illegal adventure, but though Hammond was neither good nor beautiful he had endeared himself to the country in many ways and everyone was glad to think that his stormy career was likely to come to an end in the peaceful harbour of marriage instead of in some more tragic fashion. And no one could help rejoicing that Fate had arranged for the advent of Jack Heywood’s sister while the de Rivas were still away, and that the whole affair was likely to be fixed up before the de Rivas' return which, by the way, after the lapse of nearly a year had already been signalled.

The Hammond-Heywood engagement then, was announced about two weeks after the ball at the Club, though everyone knew perfectly well that it had been signed and sealed, so to speak, on that night, the extra two weeks being thrown in as a concession to conventionality and a sort of bonus to the men who had been about to propose. Besides Miss Heywood had a family in England whom it was Hammond’s business to consult and beguile, and consultations and beguilements take time as well as money when they have to be conducted by cable. In the meantime, it was plain to see that Love had found Maryon Hammond at last, and that he was loved openly and gladly back. It was for all the world to see—​as patent as the silver stars on a purple African night. He would walk rough-shod over everybody in a drawing-room or cricket-field or polo-ground to reach her side, and she would openly and obviously forget everybody else in the place and in the world when he was there. No matter how big or how curious the crowd these two were alone in it when they were together. People said that it must have been a strange, almost piquant, sensation to Hammond so expert in secret intrigue, so versed in the dissimulation and duplicity of illegal adventure, to be at last conducting a love affair in the open, reckless of the eyes of men, and the tongues of women, because for once the woman in the case had nothing to fear! Be that as it may, a passion so fine and frank and careless had never before been seen in a land where great passions are not rare, and Salisbury genuflected before it in all reverence and admiration.

It was at this propitious juncture that the de Rivas elected to return. Their home was not in Salisbury but about seventy miles off, out Mazoe way too, and incidentally not above ten miles from Hammond’s own camp, but they put up at a hotel in town for a week or two to give Mrs de Rivas time to recover from the fatigue of a long coach journey, and be welcomed back by old friends. Promptly all the women in the town went to call, and take the news of the Hammond-Heywood engagement.

The Spanish Inquisition is no more, but the gentle art of putting the question accompanied by the watching torture has not yet been lost. Even when malice is absent, who can eradicate curiosity from the feminine temperament? Cara de Rivas' dearest and most intimate Inquisitors were tender for her, however. They considered it only human that they should desire to know how she was "taking it," but they had no coarse intent of putting questions. Merely they hoped to extract a few answers—​eyes and lips and incidentally clothes tell so much!

And behold! two of the answers were entirely unexpected.

The first was that Cara de Rivas was as deeply in love with her husband as he was plainly and profoundly in love with her. This was for all the world to see and all the world proclaimed it instantly; but the other and charming piece of news was more subtly distributed. Women conveyed it by means of their eyebrows, with benign little smiles, and cryptic remarks, such as that--"It was all for the best;" "It would make such a bond"; "No more dangerous friendships;" "It would help the poor thing to forget (if there was anything to forget)!"