Undulating grass plains, a wide river winding through the country like a silver serpent, clumps of tropical trees, and a distant vision of fantastic peaks, all flushed with splendid colours under the fierce light of the sunset. And the sky, like a delicate shell of pale pink, fading off in the east to cold blue and sombre shadows, in the west deepening into vivid billowy masses of golden clouds, which tried unsuccessfully to veil the intolerable splendour of the sinking sun. A breath of odorous wind under the burning sky, the chattering of monkeys, the shrieking of brilliant-coloured parrots, and the low, guttural song of a naked negro cleaning his weapons in the near camp.
The man looked at all this with vague, unseeing eyes, for his thoughts were far away, then, dashing away the tears, he once more began to read the letter he held in his hand.
"My dear Eustace,
"I can hardly believe that it is nine months since you left us. I wonder in what part of Africa you will read this letter, that is, if it ever reaches you, of which I have considerable doubt. The papers, of course, informed us of your many months of delay at Zanzibar before you could go forward, so perhaps this letter may reach you before you get beyond the confines of civilization. I was very much astonished to hear you were at Zanzibar, as I thought you left England with the intention of going up the Nile, and getting into the inland country that way. However, I suppose you had good reason for changing your plans, and are now pushing forward into unknown lands.
"I have a great deal to tell you about ourselves and friends, which I am sure you will be pleased to hear. In the first place, both my wife and myself are completely happy--all the clouds of our earlier life have vanished, and I think that no married pair can have such perfect confidence and love for one another. I ascribe this happy state of things to you, dear old fellow, for had you not made Mrs. Veilsturm leave San Remo, and brought my wife to my sick bed, we could never have come together again. I know, good friend that you are, you will be pleased to hear we are so perfectly happy, and that every year--every day--every hour, my wife grows dearer to me. As I write these words her dear face is bending over my shoulder to read what I have set down, and she cordially endorses what I have said.
"Thanks to your kind gift of Aunt Jelly's money, all things pecuniarily are well with me. I have paid off the mortgages on the Hall, and invested the rest of the money, so what with the income arising from such investments, and my rents, now regularly coming to me instead of to the lawyers, I am quite a rich man, and the Erringtons can once wore hold up their head in the county as a representative family.
"By-the-way, I have some news to give you about our mutual friend, Mrs. Veilsturm, with whom I was so infatuated. She went on to New York, followed by Dolly Thambits, and has now married him. He is a young idiot to be sure, but then he has an excellent income, and that is all she cares about. Won't she spend his thousands for him? Well, I think you and I agree on that subject. Regarding Major Griff, she evidently found him less useful after than before she became Mrs. Thambits, so she has pensioned him off with a few thousands, and I hear the Major has gone to Central America, with a view to entering the service of one of the republics of those regions. His future fate is not hard to prophesy, as he will either become President or be shot, but in either event I don't think he'll trouble our fair friend again who has retired so peacefully into married life. Next year, I believe, she is coming to town, and is going to cut a great dash, so no doubt Mrs. Thambits will be even more popular than Mrs. Veilsturm--although, I dare say, there will not be any Sunday evenings of the Monte Carlo style.
"You will perhaps wonder at my writing so coolly about this lady, but the fact is, I now see only too clearly the danger I escaped. She would have ruined my life, and certainly made a good attempt to do so, only you fortunately intervened in time. What magic you used to force her to leave me alone I do not know, but I certainly have to thank you for extricating me from a very perilous position.
"Another item of news. Mrs. Macjean has presented the delighted Otterburn with a son and heir. By-the-way, I should not call him Otterburn, as, by the death of his father four months ago, he is now Lord Dunkeld. But old habits are hard to get rid of, and I always talk of them as Mrs. Macjean and Otterburn. They are very happy, as they deserve to be, for Dunkeld is a real good fellow, and Lady Dunkeld--well, she is all that is charming.
"Do you remember Miss Minnie Pelch, poor Aunt Jelly's companion? She is now down at Errington with us, as she was so lonely in town that Alizon took pity on her, and she is installed as companion at the Hall. Her volume of verse came out in due splendour, and was entirely overlooked by the press, at which I am not sorry, as if the poems had been noticed--well, you know the poems of old. Minnie, however, thinks this silence is jealousy, and quite looks upon herself as a shining light of the Victorian age, so neither Alizon nor I undeceive her, for she is a good little woman, though somewhat of a bore with her infernal--I mean eternal--poetry.