Gregory looked round, but, nothing else suggesting itself, he sat down on a box on the opposite side of the door. Lyndall sat before him, her chin resting in her hand; her eyes, steel-gray by day but black by night, looked through the doorway into the next room. After a time he thought she had entirely forgotten his proximity, and he dared to inspect the little hands and neck as he never dared when he was in momentary dread of the eyes being turned upon him. She was dressed in black, which seemed to take her yet further from the white-clad, gewgawed women about her; and the little hands were white, and the diamond ring glittered. Where had she got that ring? He bent forward a little and tried to decipher the letters, but the candle-light was too faint. When he looked up her eyes were fixed on him. She was looking at him — not, Gregory felt, as she had ever looked at him before; not as though he were a stump or a stone that chance had thrown in her way. To-night, whether it were critically, or kindly, or unkindly he could not tell, but she looked at him, at the man, Gregory Rose, with attention. A vague elation filled him. He clenched his fist tight to think of some good idea he might express to her; but of all those profound things he had pictured himself as saying to her, when he sat alone in the daub-and-wattle house, not one came. He said at last:

“These Boer dances are very low things;” and then, as soon as it had gone from him, he thought it was not a clever remark, and wished it back.

Before Lyndall replied Em looked in at the door.

“Oh, come,” she said; “they are going to have the cushion-dance. I do not want to kiss any of these fellows. Take me quickly.”

She slipped her hand into Gregory’s arm.

“It is so dusty, Em; do you care to dance any more?” he asked, without rising.

“Oh, I do not mind the dust, and the dancing rests me.”

But he did not move.

“I feel tired; I do not think I shall dance again,” he said.

Em withdrew her hand, and a young farmer came to the door and bore her off.

“I have often imagined,” remarked Gregory — but Lyndall had risen.

“I am tired,” she said. “I wonder where Waldo is; he must take me home. These people will not leave off till morning, I suppose; it is three already.”

She made her way past the fiddlers, and a bench full of tired dancers, and passed out at the front door. On the “stoep” a group of men and boys were smoking, peeping in at the windows, and cracking coarse jokes. Waldo was certainly not among them, and she made her way to the carts and wagons drawn up at some distance from the homestead.