“A splendid chap. He’s here to-night, after a bad go of fever and pneumonia he got somehow on his way up-country.”
“On his way up-country?” she repeated mechanically.
“It appears that he was coming up by coach but left it at Palapye to go off on a hunt for a little child that was lost from some waggons. Everyone had given up the search, but he found the child away in a wild krantz, starving, with an old mad Bechuana boy.”
“Was it’s mother alive?” Vivienne had a sickening vision of that poor mother sitting, hat in hand, outside her hut.
“He got back just in time to save her reason. Queer fellow! We’d never have known anything about it from him, of course. The story came up by wire from Palapye.”
“Is that he talking to Lady Angela Vinning?”
“Yes. Shall we go over?”
“No. Take me out into the air please,” she faltered. Her face was white as death. So he it was whom she had robbed! Kerry de Windt! The man who had not only saved the child’s life, but herself, from God knew what worse horrors than death!
It was out in one of the verandahs, dimly lit by Japanese lanterns, that he was brought and introduced to her.
“You two should find plenty to talk about, as you both know all about being lost on the veld,” said the host gaily, and hurried away to other duties.