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Updated: June 9, 2025
Unseen she put out one hand behind her, and leaned it for support against the iron-studded oak timbers of the chapel door. But his eyes were not upon her as he went on, unconsciously, to deal the last, worst blow. "I said, ma'am, that my dead friend ... the name is Richard Mildare, Captain, late of the Grey Hussars.... You are ill, ma'am. I have been inconsiderate, and over-tired you."
A grating voice addressing him pulled his head round. "Lord Beauvayse ..." "Did you speak to me, Doctor? As I was saying, Miss Mildare," he went on, continuing the blameless conversation, "dust-storms and flies are the twin curses of South Africa." The harsh voice spoke to him again. He looked round, and met Saxham's eyes, hard and cold as blue stones.
But that Beauvayse of all others should venture to approach her, presume to rear an image of himself in the shrine of her pure breast; win her from her high aims and lofty ideals with a bold look and a few whispered words, and, having thrown his honourable name into the lap of a light woman as indifferently as a jewelled trinket, should dare to offer Lynette Mildare dishonour, is monstrous, hideous, unbearable....
His vivid eyes lightened, his heavy brows smoothed out their puckers, and the tense lines about his lips relaxed. His own words came back to him: "The Past is done with. Why should not the Future be fair?" He knew, as he looked towards Lynette Mildare, who personified the Future for him, and his mood changed. He had loved her without hope.
Again the birdlike laugh rang out. "Now you know everything there is in the letter, girls, except the bit of poetry at the end, which only my most intimate friends may be permitted to read. Lynette Mildare!"
The locket with a picture in it and brilliants round, "that might be worth seventy," the dainty, pearly miniature on ivory by Daudin, of the dead woman who lay buried under the Little Kopje, and which Bough had taken from the body of the English traveller, together with the signet-ring and everything else of value that Richard Mildare had owned, possessed a strange fascination for the thief.
Well, I will convey your offering to our chaplain, Father Wix, since you desire it." "I do desire it or, rather, poor Mildare would." An awful sensation as of sinking down through the solid floors, through the foundations of the Convent, into unfathomable deeps possessed her. Her eyes closed; she forced them open, and made a desperate rally of her sinking forces.
In the previous July, when Sir Danvers Muller was visiting Lord Williams of Afghanistan at Pretoria, Owen Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., had been married to Lynette Bridget-Mary Mildare at the Registrar's Office, Gueldersdorp, and at the Catholic Church. One hour after the ceremony the happy pair left by the mail for Cape Town. Gueldersdorp turned out to do them honour. We have heard the people cheer.
And now ... his thoughts were tipped with fire as he drank in the suddenly-awakened, vivid, delicate beauty of Lynette Mildare. Now he realised the depths of his own mad folly. Oh, to have had the right to hope again, to love again, to live again, and be grateful to David, who had betrayed him, and Mildred, who had deserted him to this end!
The faint stain of colour that had showed through Saxham's dead-white skin faded. He waited with strained attention for what was coming. "South Africa Lady Lucy and Mildare bolted to," went on Bingo, "and now you know the kind of mare's-nest her ladyship had scratched up. And," declared Bingo, "rather than have had to spin this yarn.
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