"I may as well tell you that my name is Juliet. Amber is my sister’s name."

That was the last straw! He went away raging. How could he have wasted the golden treasure of his heart on her? She was one of those coldblooded brutes of women who think they can do anything they like with men--(instead of letting men do anything they like with them!) He thought he should never feel better again, except after a bottle of Guinness’s mixed with a pint of champagne. But even that had a less satisfactory effect than usual.

No sign of her for the greater part of next day, and discreet inquiry of Rupee, the new nurse-boy, elicited the fact that she was resting with a bad headache. For some occult reason the information cheered Bettington wonderfully. The steamer that was to take them all down to Durban arrived, and he and some of the warrior men went down to choose their cabins for the next day’s departure. Bettington knew the Captain well, and accepted an invitation to lunch. He had a sort of feeling that by so doing he was scoring off the falsely-called Amber. She should see that though she didn’t want him somebody else did,--if it was only the Captain of a Union-Castle liner. He knew the feeling was childish, but he had it all the same.

When he got back to the hotel, there she was sitting in the verandah. She went on writing her letters and pretended not to see him, so he got a newspaper and pretended to read it. This state of affairs continued for a long time, until an interruption came in the shape of a Cape cart with four spanking mules which pulled up before the hotel. A little hardy blue-eyed woman descended, and Bettington immediately recognised in her a lady whom he knew very well. She was the wife of a South African railway contractor, and the Madame Sans Gene of Salisbury, from whence she and her husband had evidently just driven in their own conveyance. She did not see Bettington at once, but pounced on Amber Eyes and shook her hand vigorously.

"How do, Miss van Rimmel? We came through Umtali and I saw your sister, Mrs Stannard. She loaded me with loving messages for you. I also have a parcel for the baby. Hope she’s fit?"

"Ah! Thank you," cried Amber Eyes, and looked over the other woman’s shoulder to where Bettington stood with mouth open and eyes starting in his head. "My sister’s baby is very well. I had such excellent help with her on the way down."

"Good! Mrs Stannard was rather anxious as to how you would manage. Stan is getting along fine, and they hope to join you and Aimee in Durban much sooner than they expected. Hullo, Bet! What you doing here?"

Bettington came forward and made such genuflections as were expected of him. His eyes had resumed their normal position, and his mouth was now trimmed with a sarcastic smile. But it is fair to say that the sarcasm was at his own expense. When Mrs Paulton had gone in and left them alone, he said gravely:

"I hope it gave you great pleasure to make a fool of me?"

"To do one’s duty should always be pleasant," she responded with a ghost of a smile in her eye.

"Do you think you played quite fair?"

"Do you think you did? Because I look like my sister, and borrow her Panama, and wear her bangle, are those any reasons why you should take me for a married woman—​and a disloyal one at that?"

Bettington had to take his medicine like a man. The best he could do was to mutter with a pious eye that he "thanked God she was not."

"I thank God too," she said inflexibly. But a little later she added more kindly:

"Perhaps we both rather meanly took advantage of private information."

"I don’t know what inexpiable things you could have heard about me?" he asked reproachfully, secure in a sense of self-righteousness.

"When I persuaded my sister to let me go at the last moment instead of herself, Mr Randal gave me a brief resume of your character and career. No doubt he thought it might interest me to know something of the man whose waggon I was to share."

Ah! He almost wished he had time to go back to Umtali for a few days. Yet he really could not feel very mad with Randal or anyone else. Life looked so beguilingly fair all at once. His heart was light as a cork, but he pitched his voice to a becomingly humble key.

"Don’t you think we might begin again from quite a new basis?" he asked, looking at her with all the arrogance gone out of his eyes. "Without remembering any secret information or old scores?"

She considered a little while with downcast eyes, and a faint flush in her cheek. At last: "All right," she said softly. Then added reflectively: "Aimee will want a lot of looking after on the voyage."

But Bettington’s spirit was not quite broken.

"No!" he said clearly and firmly, "I bar Aimee."

"She is rather a little reptile," said Aimee’s aunt.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

PROGRESS.