He fancied a look of relief came into her face. She must be intensely imbued with the cause of her countrymen, with racial partisanship, he decided.
“Nothing? But if you think they tried to murder you?”
“Oh, I don’t think much of that. I’m not going to bother any more about it. Why should I?”
“But you English are always such a—well, vindictive race. It is one of your favourite boasts that you never let anybody get the better of you—that you are always even with them—I think that is the phrase,” she said, and there was a strange look upon her face which rather puzzled him.
“Are we? Well, here’s an exception then. Life is too short to bother oneself about trifles merely for the sake of ‘being even with’ somebody. Likely one of these days Gideon Roux will be the first to be sorry he shot at me. He needn’t have done it. The cave affair and the rifles didn’t concern me. I shouldn’t have given it away. But he won’t come down with the value of the mare, because I believe the poor devil is none too flush at any time. So what does it matter?”
That strange look upon Aletta’s face deepened. He did not quite know how to read it.
“Have you told father about this?” she said.
“Not yet. I had meant to. I don’t think I shall at all now. It doesn’t seem worth while.”
“Then why did you tell me?”
“I don’t know.”