LINDELA.
A woman, young, tall, perfectly proportioned, light of colour, and with the bright and pleasing expression common among the well-born of the Ba-gcatya maidens, enhanced by large lustrous eyes, lips parted in a smile half-startled, half-coquettish, revealing a row of teeth of dazzling whiteness of unrivalled evenness. She wore a mútya or skirt of beautiful bead-work, and a soft robe of dressed fawn-skin but half concealed the splendid outlines of her frame. Withal there was an aspect of dignity in her erect carriage, and the pose of her head, which the Grecian effect of the impiti, or cone into which her hair was gathered above the scalp, went far to enhance. She was not alone—two other young women, also attractive of aspect, being in attendance upon her, though these held somewhat in the background.
"Greeting, Nyonyoba," she began, in a sweet and musical voice. "I was startled for a moment—here where I expected to find none."
"To thee, greeting, daughter of the great," returned Laurence, for this girl was a princess of the highest rank in the nation, being, in fact, a daughter of Nondwana the king's brother—that same chief whose son's accession to manhood was to be the occasion of his own departure to another sphere. Nor was it, indeed, the first time these two had talked together.
"And why are you sad and heavy of countenance, Nyonyoba? Was the hunt bad—the game scarce?" she went on, with a quick searching glance into his eyes.
"Not so," he answered. "Those who are with me bring on much ivory for the king's treasury. For yourself, Lindela, I found a bright-plumaged and rare bird, which I will stuff and set up for you."
The girl uttered a cry of delight, and her face brightened. It so happened that Laurence was something of a taxidermist, and had already stuffed a few birds and small animals for the chief's daughter, who was as delighted with her increasing "museum" as any child could have been. Now, in her unfeigned glee over the prospect of a new specimen, Lindela looked extremely attractive; and noting it, an unconscious softness had crept into the man's tone. Even the girls behind noticed it, and whispered to each other, sniggering:
"Hau! Isityeli! Quite a wooer! Nyonyoba is hoeing up new land."
"Withdraw a little from these, Lindela," he said in a lowered tone; "I would talk."