“You are so silent, so cold, my Em,” he cried. “Have you nothing to say to me?”

A little shade of wonder filled her eyes.

“I will do everything you tell me,” she said.

What else could she say? Her idea of love was only service.

“Then, my own precious one, promise never to kiss that fellow again. I cannot bear that you should love any one but me. You must not! I will not have it! If every relation I had in the world were to die to-morrow, I would be quite happy if I still only had you! My darling, my love, why are you so cold? Promise me not to love him any more. If you ask me to do anything for you, I would do it, though it cost my life.”

Em put her hand very gravely round his neck.

“I will never kiss him,” she said, “and I will try not to love any one else. But I do not know if I will be able.”

“Oh, my darling, I think of you all night, all day. I think of nothing else, love nothing else,” he said, folding his arms about her.

Em was a little conscience-stricken; even that morning she had found time to remember that in six months her cousin would come back from school, and she had thought to remind Waldo of the lozenges for his cough, even when she saw Gregory coming.

“I do not know how it is,” she said humbly, nestling to him, “but I cannot love you so much as you love me. Perhaps it is because I am only a woman; but I do love you as much as I can.”

Now the Kaffir maids were coming from the huts. He kissed her again, eyes and mouth and hands, and left her.

Tant’ Sannie was well satisfied when told of the betrothment. She herself contemplated marriage within the year with one or other of her numerous “vrijers,” and she suggested that the weddings might take place together.

Em set to work busily to prepare her own household linen and wedding garments. Gregory was with her daily, almost hourly, and the six months which elapsed before Lyndall’s return passed, as he felicitously phrased it, “like a summer night, when you are dreaming of some one you love.”

Late one evening, Gregory sat by his little love, turning the handle of her machine as she drew her work through it, and they talked of the changes they would make when the Boer-woman was gone, and the farm belonged to them alone. There should be a new room here, and a kraal there. So they chatted on. Suddenly Gregory dropped the handle and impressed a fervent kiss on the fat hand that guided the linen.

“You are so beautiful, Em,” said the lover. “It comes over me in a flood suddenly, how I love you.”

Em smiled.

“Tant’ Sannie says when I am her age no one will look at me; and it is true. My hands are as short and broad as a duck’s foot, and my forehead is so low, and I haven’t any nose. I can’t be pretty.”