Renshaw Fanning's Quest: A Tale of the High Veldt. Mitford Bertram

And Marian’s disposition was as sweet as her face, her mind that of a refined gentlewoman. She was born in the colony, and had lived the greater part of her life where we now see her, helping to keep house for her brother and his wife.

      “Hot or cool, I vote we stroll somewhere,” cried Violet, starting up from her chair with a restlessness and energy she seldom displayed at that time of the day, when the sun made himself very definitely felt, even at that elevation.

      “Very well,” acquiesced the other, gathering up her work. Then she added, with a smile, “You had better get a sunshade, Violet, or you’ll be taking back quite a stock of freckles. The now disconsolate ones will all cry off then.”

      “Will they! But—are you not going to take one?”

      “No. I’m about burnt enough already. Besides, there are no disconsolate ones in my case to doom to disillusion, so it doesn’t matter.”

      “Oh yes! Very likely! I’m sure to believe that.”

      “Go away, and get your hat on,” interrupted Marian.

      “Come now, Marian,” said Violet, as the two girls wandered down the shady walk under the fruit-trees. “It’s all very well for you to affect the solemn, and all that kind of thing; but I don’t believe in it a bit, let me tell you. No—not one bit.”

      “Oh, don’t you?”

      “No, I don’t. I believe, for all that quiet way of yours, you are just as dangerous as they pretend I am. You’re deep; that’s what you are. Now, there’s that nice Mr. Fanning. You flirted with him shockingly. You know you did!”

      “I wasn’t aware of it,” was the calm response. And then came a pause. It was finally broken by Marian.

      “Poor Renshaw! He and I were—well, not exactly children together, for he is about a dozen years my senior, but we have known each other all our lives. And, by the way, Violet, I hope you have not been intentionally adding him to the list of your captives; but I am tolerably certain he has fallen a victim. Whether it is your doing, or pure accident, I don’t undertake to guess. But he is not the sort of man you ought to make a fool of.”

      Violet laughed—mockingly, maliciously.

      “Why, Marian, you’re jealous. I’ve struck the right chord at last. Never mind; it isn’t too late now. I won’t stand in your light, I promise you.”

      Most women under the circumstances would have fired up—repelled the insinuation angrily. But Marian Selwood was not of that sort.

      “Poor Renshaw is quite unlucky enough, without having a—well—damaged heart thrown into the scale,” she went on. “His life is hard enough in all conscience, and is just now a well-nigh hopeless struggle, I don’t mind telling you in confidence. I dare say you think there isn’t much in him because he is reserved; but more than once his cool courage has been the means of saving not one life, but many. I have heard men say, not once, not yet twice, that in any undertaking involving peril or enterprise there is no man they would rather have at their side than Renshaw Fanning. And he is the most unselfish of men. His is a splendid character, and one not often met with in these days.”

      “Well done! Well done, Marian!” cried Violet, mischievously. “The secret is out at last. I know where Mr. Fanning’s trumpeter lives. But, joking apart, he is awfully nice, only a trifle too solemn, you know, like yourself; in fact, you would suit each other admirably. There now, don’t get huffy. I assure you I quite missed him for ever so long after he left. How long is it since he left?”

      “Just over five weeks.”

      “As long as that, is it? Well, I wish he’d come again; there, is that an adequate tribute to your Bayard? But I suppose he won’t be able to come all that distance again—hundreds of miles, isn’t it?—for ever so long—and then I shall be gone—Oh! Look there! Look, Marian, look!” she broke off, her voice rising to a scream, as she pointed, terror-stricken, to an object rising out of the grass some twenty yards distant.