Dainty observed his altered appearance, but was unable to fathom its cause.
As his manner grew more and more restrained toward her, she unconsciously turned to Schwatka, whose equable temperament seemed to invite her confidence and her friendship.
Gradually the Austrian made himself a necessary factor in the lives of both husband and wife, and he was her constant attendant in her rides and drives over the veldt.
All this time Dainty was only conscious that his presence made her supremely happy. He was always thoughtful of her welfare, always doing little acts of kindness, which, for the first time in his life, were spontaneous.
She was a refreshing rest to his blasé, worldly nature. When a man who has become selfish, and therefore cruel, in satisfying his own vanity, and pandering to his own appetites, meets with a fresh, guileless soul like Dainty’s, he is at once enthralled, and, whether he admits it even to himself, sets about winning a new toy.
Herr Schwatka’s new delight was a constant surprise to him; and as he drew out forces in her nature, of whose latent existence he had been ignorant, she more and more revealed charming little traits of character, which had been hidden from Donald.
She loved to ride, and heretofore Donald had always gladly accompanied her in these equestrian pleasures. But as solitude wrapped him up more and more, Schwatka began to take the place at her side. As soon as the outskirts of the town were reached, she would give rein to her horse, and together they would speed over the veldt. The colour came to her cheeks, and a sparkle to her eye, which made her look like an houri in the rosy morn.
Kate Darcy’s early morning ride was also her chief delight. Seated on her horse “Beauty,” she would leave the camp locked in slumber, and scamper across the barren waste of country, to greet the first rays of the rising sun. Fearless and independent in all her actions, she had learned to rely on her own judgment, and to adapt herself to her surroundings. On several occasions she had seen a couple of equestrians appear on the horizon; and as the outline of their forms became visible, and she recognised Herr Schwatka and Dainty, with a word her horse would shoot away in an opposite direction. She knew human nature, and perceived that the Austrian was gaining a mental ascendency over her friend. Was this to be the beginning of the too-oft repeated story of mistaken love? If so she would avoid seeing a human spider weave his web at that beautiful hour of the day. So she would shake off a sensation of depression, and, in love with dear old Mother Nature, free as air she would bound away, until they were lost to view; only so restored to mental quiet. With swift and graceful motions, “Beauty” flew across the shrubless plain, and when she talked to him caressingly, he would shake his head and lift his ears with as much expression in them as in a coquette’s eyes, and dash forward with a sense of untrammelled delight.
As “Beauty” leaped ditches and hillocks, Kate would laugh aloud with the spirit of freedom which filled her; that spirit which fills the air of old Africa, with its spiky topped mountains and its barbaric elements, which exploration, civilisation, and Christianity have not conquered. The sleeping barbarian within wakens more or less in every human heart, attuned to nature, when in Africa.