"I think things are going on much as they have done this last six months," said Mayne, speaking reluctantly.
"But what'll it be when he's gone? I ask you that? What kind of a life's she goin' to lead then?"
Mayne hesitated. "I don't know," he said at length, with a touch of reserve.
"You know how the she-devil hates her," hissed Bert. "She won't keep her, never fear. She'll chuck her out to any of these blanked scum around the town, and then say the girl's disgraced her, and she'll have no more to do with her! I know Tante Wilma!"
Mayne looked keenly and kindly at the excited speaker. He was sorry for him, from the bottom of his heart; but what to say he did not know, without betraying confidence.
"I think you see things in too black a light," he said at last. "Mrs. Lutwyche is not without a sense of duty, though we know she is not good-tempered. And Millie is not friendless, nor incapable of taking her own part."
Bert lifted his leonine head, and pointed with a gesture of his hand towards the house.
"He told me, with his blanky British pride, that he'd sooner see her in her coffin than married to a man with an ounce of Boer blood in him—him that let a Boer woman marry him," he growled. "He knows my mother was English; I told him. I'd take care of her."
Mr. Mayne was able to follow the trend of the jerky, disconnected sentences.
"Millie's young yet to think of marriage," he said.