She gazed at me fearlessly. “No, no!” she cried, clasping her hands; “much as I love you, dear Hubert, I cannot consent to it. I am too proud!—too proud! I will not allow the world to say—not even to say falsely”—her face flushed crimson; her voice dropped low—“I will not allow them to say those hateful words, 'He married a murderer's daughter.'”
I bowed my head. “As you will, my darling,” I answered. “I am content to wait. I trust you in this, too. Some day, we will prove it.”
And all this time, preoccupied as I was with these deeper concerns, I had not even asked where Hilda lived, or what she was doing!
CHAPTER VII
THE EPISODE OF THE STONE THAT LOOKED ABOUT IT
Hilda took me back with her to the embryo farm where she had pitched her tent for the moment; a rough, wild place. It lay close to the main road from Salisbury to Chimoio.
Setting aside the inevitable rawness and newness of all things Rhodesian, however, the situation itself was not wholly unpicturesque. A ramping rock or tor of granite, which I should judge at a rough guess to extend to an acre in size, sprang abruptly from the brown grass of the upland plain. It rose like a huge boulder. Its summit was crowned by the covered grave of some old Kaffir chief—a rude cairn of big stones under a thatched awning. At the foot of this jagged and cleft rock the farmhouse nestled—four square walls of wattle-and-daub, sheltered by its mass from the sweeping winds of the South African plateau. A stream brought water from a spring close by: in front of the house—rare sight in that thirsty land—spread a garden of flowers. It was an oasis in the desert. But the desert itself stretched grimly all round. I could never quite decide how far the oasis was caused by the water from the spring, and how far by Hilda's presence.
“Then you live here?” I cried, gazing round—my voice, I suppose, betraying my latent sense of the unworthiness of the position.
“For the present,” Hilda answered, smiling. “You know, Hubert, I have no abiding city anywhere, till my Purpose is fulfilled. I came here because Rhodesia seemed the farthest spot on earth where a white woman just now could safely penetrate—in order to get away from you and Sebastian.”