"Oh, that is good! I am pleased! What a pity he did not get back in time for my twenty-first birthday last spring! I wonder whether he will think that I have changed!"
"Your wonder will be speedily set at rest. As it appeared that Lance was inseparable from his friends, and that this was his only night, I told him to bring them both back to dinner at eight. I sent Elizabeth for fish and cream, and I wish you would go into the dining-room on your way upstairs, and see that the flowers on the table are all right."
"Well!" cried Melicent, and heaved a sigh. "Things are happening to-night in the bosom of this peaceful family. Pater, just put away that odious newspaper in the table drawer, so that nobody can see it. To think of Mr. Mayne being in England! Why didn't he write and say he was coming?"
"I fancy he only quite suddenly found that he could get away. You see, all his plans are changed. He is to be Bishop of Pretoria."
"Bishop! Oh, lucky Pretoria!"
Melicent paused again, her eyes full of memories. She saw an open grave, a long black procession of uncouth people winding down the rough fields, past the Kaffir huts—the sun blazing down on Carol Mayne's sharp-cut, ascetic face.
"I am the Resurrection and the Life. He that believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."
The thought of what her heart had been then, torn with hatred, racked with grief, savage, sullen, lonely, arose in sharp contrast with the thought of all that had been since, all that she had come to understand, believe and hope, in these full years of growth that lay between.
Moved by a rare impulse, she stooped and tenderly kissed Brenda's forehead, before going to inspect the flowers upon the dinner-table.