“What’s that? I didn’t say you might call me by my name.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs Blachland,” was the reply, bitterly, resentfully emphatic. Then, thawing suddenly, “You didn’t mind it the other day, and—well, you know what you are to me and always will be.”
“Until somebody else is more so,” came the smiling interruption. “Hark”—raising a hand suddenly, and listening intently. “Yes, it is. Will you be a very dear boy, Justin, and do something for me?”
“You know I would do anything for you—anything in the wide world.”
“Oh, this is nothing very great. There are guinea-fowl over there in the kopje—I can hear them. I only want you to take Hilary’s gun, and go and shoot me a few. Will you? The supplies are running low.”
“Of course I will,” was the answer, as they both went inside, and Justin Spence, invested with an excellent Number 12 bore, and a belt full of cartridges, started off on his errand of purveyor to the household, all his ill-humour gone. He was very young, you see, and the next best thing to glowing in the presence of his charmer was to be engaged in rendering her some service.
She stood there watching his receding form, as it moved away rapidly over the veldt in long elastic strides. Once he turned to look back. She waved her hand in encouragement.
“How good-looking he is!” she said to herself. “How well he moves too—so well set up and graceful! But why was he so emphatic just now when he called me that? Was it accidental? I wonder was it? Oh yes, it must have been. That’s the worst of an arrière pensée, one is always imagining things. No, the very fact of his putting such emphasis upon the name shows it was accidental. He’d never have been so mean—Justin isn’t that sort.”
She stood for a little longer, shading her eyes to gaze after him, again smiling softly to herself as she reflected how easily she could turn him round her little finger, how completely and entirely he was her slave; and, indeed, Justin Spence was not the only one of whom this held good. There was a warm-blooded physical attractiveness about her which never failed to appeal to those of the other sex. She was not beautiful, hardly even pretty. Her dark hair was plentiful, but it was coarse and wavy, and she had no regularity of feature, but lovely eyes and a very fascinating smile. Her hands were large, but her figure, of medium height, was built on seductive lines; and yet this strange conglomeration of attractions and defects was wont to draw the male animal a hundredfold more readily than the most approved and faultless types of beauty could ever have done.
Still musing she entered the house. It was cool within. Strips of “limbo,” white and dark blue, concealed the wattle and thatch, giving the interior something of the aspect of a marquee. There were framed prints upon the walls, mostly of a sporting character, and a few framed photographs. Before one of these she paused.