“Thanks,” and the doctor's olive features flushed a deep red; “I will come. I think I have fired my last shot in Parliament, and intend to resign, and so do not care much whether I ever enter the House again. And I shall have much pleasure in meeting your aunt and cousin again; I was introduced to them some weeks ago.”
“So they told me,” and Brewster smiled sweetly again. “Then you won't come as a stranger. Now I must be off. I shall call for you after lunch tomorrow.”
As Lionel Brewster threw himself back in his cab and smoked his cigar he cursed vigorously. “Damn the cursed half-breed of a fellow! He's clever enough, and all that; but what the devil Helen can see in him to make me invite him down to Te Ariri I don't know. Curse her infernal twaddle about the rights of humanity and such fustian. Once you are my wife, my sweet, romantic cousin, I'll knock all that idiotic bosh on the head. It's bad enough to sit in the House and listen to this fellow frothing, without having to bring a quarter-bred savage into one's own family. However, he's really not a man to be ashamed of, so far as appearances go.... And I must humour her. Five thousand a year must be humoured.”
“Well, Helen, and what do you think of your savage?” said Mrs. Torringley to her niece, late the following evening, as she came to the door of Helen's room before she said good-night.
The girl was lying on a couch at the further end of the room, looking through the opened window out into the shadows of the night. The pale, clear-cut face flushed. “I like him very much, auntie. And I have been thinking.”
“Thinking of what, dear?”
“Wondering if my father ever thought, when he was leading his men against the Maoris, of the cruel, dreadful wrong he was helping to perpetrate.”
“'Cruel'! 'dreadful'! My dear child, what nonsense you talk! They were bloodthirsty savages.”
“Savages! True. But savages fighting for all that was dear to them—for their lands, their lives, their liberties as a people. Oh, auntie, when I read of the awful deeds of bloodshed that are even now being done in Africa by English soldiers, it makes me sicken. Oh, if I were only a man, I would go out into the world and——”