"You were lost in the bush nine days, and this is the tenth. I thought as much when I saw you."

"Nine days!" she muttered. "Is it possible!"

Nine days,--alone on the veld—​forever unaccounted for!--gone out of her life.

"Yes, nine days," he repeated grimly. "I suppose you got rid of most of your outfit—​that’s the usual game. I wonder you have on anything at all."

She wondered too, remembering the tales she had heard of lost people and thanked God for the unconscious feminine modesty that had remained to her even in madness and panic—​restraining her from that last horror! A warmth crept into her face, but fortunately through the darkness of her skin the man could see nothing though he was studying her keenly.

"I had a camera—​and a hat and coat," she muttered, trying to remember. "Ach! Shut thinking about it or you’ll go off your top again." She bit her lip at his rude tone, but it at least had the effect of bracing her.

"Where were you bound for, hey?"

"Buluwayo."

"Oh, indeed! We may run into your party then, for I’m bound there too."

She knew that the coach from which she was lost must have reached Buluwayo long ago, even if they had delayed a day or two looking for her. But she did not say so. The hatefulness of the man made her wish to keep up as long as possible the fiction of friends close at hand.

"What’s your name?" was the next question. She told him, "Carlton," and he repeated it contemptuously.

"A beastly swell, of course. I suppose you lost your eye-glass in the bush, hey? Well, Carlton, my fine fellah, just you understand this: If I’ve got to board and lodge you from here to Buluwayo or until your fine friends pick you up, I shall expect to be well paid for it; and don’t you forget it."

"Of course you will be paid," she said coldly. "But I must ask you in the meantime to treat me with a little civility--"

He stared at her with sullen eyes. "Civility be blowed! And don’t you give me any of your cheek, you young snook, else you’ll find yourself in the wrong box. Clear out now, I’ve had enough of you. You’re welcome to the waggon tent as I never use it,--but don’t you come near me again, except by special invitation."

This was the unpropitious beginning of Miss Carlton’s new adventure. Often during the next two weeks she wondered whether she would not have been wiser to have stayed in the bush. The man Roper, as she discovered his name to be, was an insufferable brute, and she went in mortal terror of his ever finding out that she was a woman. He ill-treated his boys shamefully, thrashing them on the smallest provocation, and never spoke to Vivienne except in a bullying tone. What nationality he was she could not imagine. From his constant use of such colonialisms as Ach! and Hey! he might have been a South African, but his accent was distinctly English, and he scoffed equally at both British and Boer, and seemed to have the good qualities of neither.

The one thing to be earnestly thankful for was that he had such a dislike to her that she was rarely troubled by his society. He invariably took his mid-day meal alone, the greater part of the day being spent in sleep, for like most transport drivers he never slept during the night treks. The hour of danger for Vivienne was at the night outspan, for it was then that Roper usually sent her a gruff message to join him at the meal that was both supper and breakfast in one—​afterwards the whole camp would sink into slumber until nearly mid-day, except Vivienne who invariably utilised this time to wash and tidy herself, though she never went far from the waggon, having a horror of once more losing herself.

Since she must see Roper then, evening was much the best time for the ordeal. Flickering firelight and the beams of a waning moon were less inimical than broad daylight to a role that became daily more difficult to play. For Vivienne was beginning to outgrow her disguise! True, few people would have recognised in the dirty, if healthy-looking young man in khaki, the erstwhile lovely debutante of a London Season, and more recently lady-correspondent of the Daily Flag. But life in the open with rest and food, were doing their work upon a healthy physique, and her beauty was rapidly returning. The heavy sunburn wearing off showed the skin beneath clear and tinted; her violet eyes had come out of retreat; her lips no longer cracked were a smooth and healthy red. Her hair, for the most part hidden under a primitive hat of plaited grass made for her by one of the umfans [Young native boys] curled and glistened in the sun as though it were alive. It was with increased anxiety that she looked every day into the tin-backed mirror.

During the long afternoon treks, lying in the waggon tent her usual occupation was the study of a letter she had found inside her blouse with no clear idea of how it came there. She wondered if it were possible that during that extraordinary period of mental aberration she had deliberately opened the letter of another person, but she preferred not to believe this.

At any rate, before she had solved the mystery of its origin she knew the thing off by heart, and now for lack of any better thing to do she daily pondered the matter of de Windt’s farm. And one day the thought flashed into her mind. "If I were to get 500 pounds and buy it instead of letting those two rogues at Onder-Koppies have it!" Instantly she dismissed the question with another--"Is this country utterly demoralising me?"--reminding herself sharply of who she was, and the obligations of her birth and honourable training. But later the thought came again, and with it extenuating arguments. After all, would such an act on her part be any more dishonourable than the one she contemplated—​marrying some man for his money? The one was no more than a piece of sharp practice, such as business men did every day of their lives. The other—​well at any rate it would be a far pleasanter way to fortune than the other!

Cogitating the matter until it made her head ache, she fell asleep at last. It is wonderful how much sleep can be put in on the veld where the air seems charged with mingled ozone and wine!

At outspan time, which seemed to come earlier than usual, she descended to Roper’s call, and slipped unassumingly into her place. Everything seemed much the same, but the moment she glanced at Roper she knew that something untoward had happened. The look she had so long dreaded was in his eye. He knew.

The discovery nearly suffocated her. She felt her face scorch as if by a swift flame, then all the blood drain from it, and tighten like a band round her heart. Opposite her, dark half-closed eyes full of malice and some other hateful quality passed over her in a gloating enveloping stare. If she had suddenly lost her appetite, so, too, it seemed, had he. It was with his eyes he feasted.

Utterly wretched and terrified, hardly knowing what she said, the girl made some attempt at conversation. He laughed strangely, answering her remark with another.

"The mail-coach passed this afternoon, and I had a few minutes' talk with the driver. He gave me a bit of news."

"Oh?" she faltered enquiringly, sick with mingled fear and curiosity. Why, oh why, had not she been awake when that coach passed?