“I won’t bet on anything so ridiculous—so atrocious,” was the tart reply. “Roden Musgrave is too far out of the ordinary specimen of a man to be twisted round even your finger, Mona.”
It was the speaker’s turn to colour now. She had spoken with such unconscious warmth that Mona was gazing fixedly at her with the most mischievous expression in the world.
“Oh!” was all she said. But the ejaculation spoke volumes.
It was a curious coincidence, but a coincidence, that Lambert, about halfway on his road to Doppersdorp, should encounter—or rather, so absent and self-absorbed was his mood, run right into—a couple of horsemen riding in the direction from which he had just come. Indeed, it was the cheery hail of one of the latter that first made him aware of their presence.
“Hi! Hallo, Lambert! You’re riding in the wrong direction, man. Turn round, turn round and come back with us. We are going to have a rhybok shoot to-morrow.”
But Charles Suffield’s hospitable suggestion only made Lambert scowl, and mutter something about having to be back. For the second of the two horsemen was the objectionable Musgrave himself, who carried a gun. The sight almost made him hesitate. He had no mind to leave the field open to his rival, for so, in his soreness and jealousy, he considered the other. His excuse, however, was not altogether a bogus one. Of late, quite an alarming proportion of his time had been spent at Quaggasfontein, and his patients were beginning to grumble, notably those who had ridden or driven some three or four hours to find him, and found him absent. His practice would suffer; for, apart from the possibility of the importation of a rival medico, there was a large proportion of people who would speedily find out their ability to do without treatment, from the mere fact that they had to. So he stuck to his intention as first expressed.
“Lambert looks a trifle off colour,” said Suffield, with a comical glance at his companion when they had resumed their way.
“Does he? I’m not sorry he didn’t leap at your suggestion. I don’t particularly care for the fellow.”
“He seems awfully gone on Mona, and I suppose she’s playing the fool with him, as usual. She’s a most incurable flirt, that girl, and she certainly does manage to bring them all to their knees. I tell her she’ll end her days an old maid.”