Hansie stood stupefied until (and strange it is that at a time like this an insignificant detail should stand out in sharp relief against the background of her dulled sensibilities) an hysterical woman ran up to her with outstretched hands, crying:
"Oh, my dear, my dear, let me congratulate you! Let us shake hands!"
The girl, thus taken by surprise in all that crowd, recoiled in shuddering distress, while, with hands clasped convulsively behind, she murmured:
"Oh, I could not—I could not!"
A wave of deep resentment passed over the ship's passengers, and hostile eyes looked on her frowningly.
That night, as the good ship was ploughing the waters on her way once more, a solitary figure stood on the deserted decks.
In the saloons great bumpers of champagne were passing round, while the strains of "God save the King" and "Rule Britannia" floated over the ocean waves.
A man in search of her, fearing perhaps, I know not what, approached the drooping figure of the girl, and pressed her hand in silent sympathy.
"There is no peace!" she said. "Do you think I believe these lying cables? The Boers will never yield. If you knew what I know, you would take these reports for what they are worth. I have been trying to think what it all can mean, and this is the conclusion I have come to. If it be true that peace has been proclaimed, then the Boers have preserved their independence, and this last fact has been excluded from the cables in view of the approaching Coronation. But my own conviction is that there is no peace at all, but that these cables have been sent to reassure the English public, and to make it possible to celebrate the crowning of the King in a splendour unclouded by the horrors of the South African war. Believe me, when the Coronation is over you will hear of a mysterious renewal of hostilities."