“Not at all. We are starting in very good time as it is, and have the whole day before us.”
The place is the drawing-room of an hotel in Grahamstown; the time, rather early in the morning; and the first of the two speakers, a tall, beautiful girl, who has just finished fastening together two or three articles of light hand-baggage as the second enters to tell her that the conveyance is all ready at the door. She wears a close-fitting dress of cool white, which, though making her appear taller, sets off to the fullest advantage a graceful, undulating figure. Waves of dark hair, touched, as it were, with a glint of bronze, half conceal the smooth brow, and the beautiful oval face, with its straight, delicately-chiselled features, is most killingly and becomingly framed in a large garden hat, lined with soft lace. The eyes are of that difficult-to-determine hue which is best defined as green hazel, and a sensitive curve about the lips imparts to the whole face a tinge of melancholy when in repose. In fact, there is a trifle of coldness about its normal expression. But when it lights up—when its owner smiles—as she now does very sweetly upon him, who is to be her travelling companion and escort throughout that day—then its charm becomes dangerous, so inexpressibly captivating is it.
“Is sweetly pretty, and has the loveliest eyes I ever saw,” had been Mrs Brathwaite’s dictum. And Claverton there and then mentally acquitted the old lady of one jot of exaggeration as his glance rested for the first time upon Lilian Strange when she entered the room prepared for the journey—fresh, cool, and in all the composure of her stately beauty. She greeted him perfectly naturally and unaffectedly, and apologised for delay, real or imaginary, as we have seen.
He had called at the hotel the evening before, to deliver a note from Mrs Brathwaite, and to inform Miss Strange in person about her journey. In the latter object he was disappointed. Miss Strange sent down a message, apologising for being unable to see him, on the ground of fatigue. She would, however, be quite ready to start at the hour named. And Claverton, beyond a slight curiosity to inspect one who would be for a considerable time an inmate of the same household as himself, didn’t care one way or another. Miss Strange would be there all right on the morrow, and he meanwhile would go and look up a friend at the very poor attempt at a club which the city boasted.
He had expected to see a pretty girl, possibly a very pretty girl, but nothing like this. As it has been said, he was not a susceptible man. In point of fact, he rather looked down on the fair sex, a few individual members of it excepted. Yet now, as he handed his charge into the light buggy which stood waiting at the door, he was conscious of an unwonted quickening of the pulse. Not then was he able to analyse the subtle fascination of her beauty and of her manner, the extraordinary charm of her voice—such a voice as it was, too; low, rich, musical; the kind of voice that could not by any possibility have belonged to a plain woman.
“Thanks; they are not in my way in the least,” said that bewildering voice as Claverton was making impossible efforts to move certain parcels in the bottom of the trap—impossible, because of the very limited space afforded by the confines of a buggy—at the same time keeping a firm hand on the rather fresh pair of horses which were bowling down the street at a fine pace. Early as it was, the streets were filling with traffic; huge loads of wool on buck-waggons from up the country crawling in behind their long spans of oxen; farmers’ carts and buggies; horsemen; and everywhere the inevitable native, male and female.
“The worst of it is that the bare fact of coming to the town entails upon one multifold commissions, utterly regardless of space or carrying power,” he answered. “Look at those bundles, for instance. Not a third of what I was to have fetched, and shall catch it for not bringing out.”
Lilian laughed.
“Never mind. I’ll bear witness in your favour. And now tell me, when do we reach Seringa Vale?”
“Not before sundown. I’m afraid you’ll be dreadfully done up. It’s very spirited of you to travel two days running like this. I wonder you didn’t allow yourself a day here to rest after coming up all the way from Port Elizabeth yesterday.”