Among those who frequently visited at Piet Plessis’ to try to cheer her up was, somewhat to her surprise, her cousin Adrian; remembering how badly he had taken her refusal in the first instance, and the dire threats he had used towards whosoever should usurp what he chose to imagine was his place. Then she reflected that, after all, he had justified the good opinion she had always held of him, in that he had accepted the inevitable in a sensible and manly way. True, once or twice it occurred to her uneasily that he might be taking the opportunity of ingratiating himself once more in view of possible accidents; but she put the thought from her Another source of surprise was the way in which she found herself talking to Adrian about the absent one. At first she had shrunk from so doing, deeming the topic an unpalatable one to him. But he had not seemed to regard it as such, and she soon lost her constraint on that head. Then Adrian’s visits became of daily occurrence, and Piet and his wife, seeing they seemed to brighten Aletta up, encouraged them.
One day she asked him how it was he still remained in Pretoria. Now that the war was an accomplished fact, his place, she should have thought, would be at the front. News kept coming in—together with more prisoners—news of brilliant engagements, and successful stands made against the foes of the Republic—yet Adrian, who had always been so energetic in his advocacy of an appeal to arms, dallied here, instead of marching with those who were fighting for the patriot cause. To this he had replied that there was time enough before him. The struggle was young yet; long before it reached its culminating point, he would be in the midst of it—yes, and would have made his mark too. Thus he told her.
The while, however, he was playing his own game, and that necessitated more than one trip over to Johannesburg, more than one conference with that other Kershaw. The plot concocted by these worthies was nearly mature.
The time had now come for playing a new card. When Aletta waxed eloquent over her absent lover, Adrian, hitherto kindly and considerately responsive, now preserved silence; indeed he lapsed into silence with just sufficient markedness as to move her to notice it. This he did some few times, until one day she asked him the reason, point-blank.
“Oh, it’s nothing, Aletta,” he answered. And then he abruptly took his leave.
But at the very next of his visits she returned to the subject, as he knew she would, and intended she should.
Why had he become so markedly constrained? she asked, a sudden deadly fear blanching her face. Had he heard anything—any bad news?
“From the front, you mean? No, no; nothing of that sort,” quailing involuntarily before the set, stony look of anguish, and half wavering in his plan. Then, recovering himself, “Well then, Aletta, it’s of no use keeping it to oneself any longer; besides, you ought to know. Are you sure there is anyone at the front in whom you have any interest at all?”
“Why, of course! Why, what do you mean, Adrian? Is not Colvin at the front?” she said, bringing out her words with a kind of gasp.
“At the front? Well, I don’t think he is, considering I saw him only this morning at Johannesburg.”