Instead, came Victor Durnovo.
He came upon her one evening when she was walking slowly home from a mild tea-party at the house of a missionary. Hearing footsteps on the sandy soil, she turned, and found herself face to face with Durnovo.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, and her voice thrilled with some emotion which he did not understand. “Ah, it is you!”
“Yes,” he said, holding her hand a little longer than was necessary. “It is I.”
His journey from Msala through the more civilised reaches of the lower river, his voyage in the coasting boat, and his arrival at Loango, had partaken of the nature of a triumphal progress. Victor Durnovo was elated—like a girl in a new dress.
“I was coming along to see you,” he said, and there was a subtle offence in his tone.
She did not trouble to tell him that Maurice was away for ten days. She felt that he knew that. There was a certain truculence in his walk which annoyed her; but she was wonderingly conscious of the fact that she was no longer afraid of him. This feeling had as yet taken no definite shape. She did not know what she felt, but she knew that there was no fear in her mind.
“Have you been successful?” she asked, with a certain negative kindness of tone bred of this new self-confidence.
“I should think we had! Why, the lot that Oscard brought down was a fortune in itself. But you saw Oscard, of course. Did he stay at the bungalow?”
“No; he stayed at the hotel.”