Ailsa reached a hand back and laid it over the girl's. "It is very sweet of you to say so, but I mayn't accept it. Seeing I have a husband like Billy, I should be a very real fool in the most literal sense if I stayed away. No, the women-heroes in this land are those who face it with a careless, selfish husband, or perhaps in a home having no love, and who win through their little day and make no plaint. God help them!"
"And you mustn't envy me," she added after a moment, "for presently, you will be doing far more than I can ever hope to do. Because it is in your heart it will find a way, and then your money will give you a great power and influence. Be hopeful, you sweet child," with a little playful pat. "Your eyes are over-sad for twenty-four, and sometimes when you smile it goes no further than your lips."
Meryl brushed her hand quickly across her eyes, and tried to laugh with an attempt at lightness.
"O yes, I will. When I get back home I'll sign cheques, and more cheques, it is so easy for me. And I'll persuade father to plan out a scheme to bring settlers on the land; land scholarships for public-school boys, or something of that sort; and I'll try and comfort myself with the thought that in this way he is giving back for what he has received. I think I'll take a stroll now it is cooler. The others will no doubt come back to-morrow, and this may be my last evening in this part of the world. I know you want to worry your cook-boy and your head about the dinner, so I'll just go a little way alone."
"Very well," Ailsa answered cheerily, guessing that she wished to take the stroll in solitude; but as she moved away towards her kitchen she said to herself, "Poor little girl! you will comfort yourself you are helping your father to fulfil his trusts, and at the back of it all quietly, silently, you will be breaking your heart for a man of iron who unbends to none."
And along the rocky pathway, that was a short cut to Edwardstown and led along a low ledge of kopjes commanding a lovely view of the valley which lay between the Mission Station and Zimbabwe's lofty northern mountain, Meryl walked slowly, with a sense of desolation she could neither gauge nor dispel; and over and over through her mind as she looked to the far kopjes passed the lines of England's strong woman-poet, Emily Brontë:
"What have those lonely mountains worth revealing? More glory and more grief than I can tell: The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell."
What have those lonely mountains worth revealing? was the dumb, inarticulate cry in her heart. Ah! what?... what?... And it seemed as if all the loneliness in the world were brooding over the blue kopje and over the spot where the ancient ruins lay, and creeping into her heart and her life for ever.
Would he ever come again, that grim soldier-policeman, who just once or twice had shown her a glimpse of the strong man's heart behind the barrier, and the strong man's everlasting charm?... Or was it indeed all finished for ever? Just an episode that came and went and had no sequel, except in that brooding sense of a great loneliness upon the distant hills and upon the path of her life. She told herself again that it must be so; that evidently the momentary softness had been only passing moods; that she counted for nothing at all to him, not even a friend it was worth while saying "good-bye" to.
With the deep sadness still in her face she turned, because a step was approaching round a tall boulder beside her. And a moment later she was looking full and deep into Peter Carew's eyes.