Chapter Twenty One.
On the Heights.
Bloemfontein, the beautiful. Have you seen Bloemfontein? No? Well you must do so before you leave Africa. In this lovely place, its streets shaded by trees, whose luxurious foliage is kept in perennial verdure by purling streams, had Kate Darcy chosen a resting-place. What a change from the dirty, dusty, noisy Fields, with streets filled with hungry worshippers of Mammon, to this crystallised mirage, for one would scarcely realise that so beautiful a garden could rise out of a desert, except in imagination.
Here in the midst of a garden of roses, encircled by a hedge of cactus, stood the house in which Kate Darcy had chosen to make her home for the nonce. Its owner, a wealthy Hollander, who had come out as a missionary, and availed himself of the opportunities of trade with great success, was now visiting Europe with his family. The house was luxuriously furnished, and a Scotchwoman, as housekeeper, watched over all the barbaric creatures—servants on the place.
One morning, a few weeks after her arrival, Kate was listlessly swinging in a hammock shaded by a fig-tree, when Margaret appeared, saying:
“A gentleman to see you, Miss Darcy.”
“Who is it, Margaret?”
“Here is his card.”
As Kate read the name of C.A. Fox—Kimberley, she said: