When one wife after another had ceased to tremble for her man, realising that this Circe did not use her toils, they rewarded her by saying amongst themselves that it must be sad to be so cold. This warmed the coldest of them—with a glow of self-satisfaction.
Mary Capron did not bother about any of them. The riddle she sought to read was Rosalind Chard. Always she watched Poppy, and pondered where she had seen her before. Poppy suspected this, but it did not agitate her. She had prepared another soft-answer-warranted-not-to-turn-away-wrath if Mary Capron should attack her in the open again. But Mary Capron, if she was not witty, was wise. She was no fencer, and had no intention of encountering Miss Chard's foil with the button off. She preferred to choose her own weapon, time, and place, and to pursue the little duel in her own fashion. She was merely "getting her hand in" when she said to Abinger, looking dreamily at Poppy the while:
"Did you ever hear of a Sphinx without a secret?"
"It's what Wilde taxed the modern society woman with being, I believe," he answered idly; he was easily one of the best-read men in Africa. "But it would not apply out here."
"No," she said dreamily. "Everyone has a secret in this country, haven't they? even girls."
At another time she and Carson were near when Poppy, with her arm in Clem's, presented Luce Abinger with a suave answer, so heavily encrusted with salt, that even his seasoned tongue went dry. However, his impertinence had warranted punishment, so he bore it as best he might. And Clem's tact oiled the troubled waters.
But Mary Capron said something to Carson that kept him awake that night.
"She's quite clever, isn't she? Only it's a pity she has to begin at the beginning for herself."
Carson had scarcely been struck by Miss Chard's cleverness—considering that on both his first and second meeting with her she had had odd lapses of something very like gaucherie. But he thought her interesting, arresting, and beautiful. He knew of no reason why he should think of her at all; but he sometimes found her face and her voice amongst his thoughts and considered the fact a curious and rather annoying thing.