She gave her hat another stab. April quivered all over, like a mother who sees a child ill-treated.
"Don't do that," she cried at last, in a poignant voice. She had seen that hat in her dreams for years, but never got so near it before. Diana Vernilands looked at her thoughtfully, then held it out.
"Put it on," she entreated. "Wear it, and be surrounded instead of me. Oh, for Heaven's sake do! I see you are just as keen as I am, and just as sick of being who you are. Try it on."
She may have meant the hat, or she may have meant the plan. April accepted the hat, and with it the plan. From the moment she saw herself in the glass her doom was dight. There was a little star-like purple flower, such as never grew on land or sea, nestling in the golden darkness of the fur. It seemed to April a flower that might have been plucked from the slopes of the blue hills of Nirvana, or found floating on the still waters of Lethe in that land where it is always afternoon. It brought dreams of romance to her heart, and made starry flowers of its own colour blossom in her eyes. She crushed the hat softly down upon her dark, winging hair, crinking and shaping it to frame her face at the right angle. Her fate was sealed.
"All right," she said, in a slow, dreamy voice. "Let's arrange it."
So while the train swooped on its way to the port whence the great ships turn their noses towards the Southern Cross, they drew up the plot, and the rôles were cast. Diana Vernilands, for the duration of the voyage only, was to be the penniless, friendless English girl, who could go her ways freely and talk and mix with any one she liked without being watched and criticized. April Poole, in the lovely hats and gowns and jewels of Lady Diana, would accept the dignity and social obligations that hedge a peer's daughter, even on a voyage to South Africa. On arrival at the Cape, each to assume her identity and disappear from the ken of their fellow-travellers: April to be swallowed up by a Cape suburb, where she was engaged to teach music and French to the four daughters of a rich wine-grower; Diana to proceed to her destination—the farm of an eccentric woman painter, somewhere on the veld.
It all looked as simple and harmless as picking apples in an orchard. No one would be any the wiser, they said, and no harm would accrue to anybody, while each girl would have the experience of enjoying herself in a new and original fashion. The only things they did not take into their calculations were their personal idiosyncrasies and the machinations of an old hag called Fate.
"What a time I'll have!" cried Diana. "Though what you will get out of it as the Earl of Roscannon's daughter beats me. You won't be sick of it half way and want to change back, I hope?"
"If you only knew how sick I am of being April Poole you wouldn't be afraid," was the fervent answer. Diana looked at her curiously.
"It can't be only the clothes—though of course I imagine it must be rotten, not having the right clothes. By the way, there are plenty for us both, you know. I did myself well in the shopping line, fortunately."