“Why do you tell me?” he asked, though he knew the answer to that too. Perhaps she did not hear, for she gave no response, only made a little foot-note to her tragic tale.
“She made me swear a solemn promise, by her sin and his.” A moment later she added:
“But I can never help being glad that I am not the child of a Boer.”
“Yet you have stayed on? You still live with the Boer who was so cruel to your mother?” Somehow it was difficult to reconcile this strange fact with her, but doubtless she could explain. She could.
“I do not. He is long ago dead. I live here with Johannes de Beer my husband.”
It seemed to Carden that the night changed and turned cold. The stars looked faint and dim, and the moonlight that had been so beautiful erstwhile grew a strange dull grey, the colour of death.
He too felt cold, and old. All the fatigue of the day descended upon him in a heavy cloud, and he suddenly had a great longing for sleep and forgetfulness.
“Ah, yes—your husband,” he said in a vague way, like a man whose thoughts are elsewhere.
“He used to pass this way often with his waggons, and my mother thought he would make me a good husband. When she was dying and I had no one in the world he promised her to marry me and take care of me. I try to mind him well, and he is not unkind.”
Later she said: