It had travelled down from the Simiacine Plateau
with others, in a parcel beneath the mattress of Jack Meredith's
litter. It was a letter written in good faith by an honest, devoted
man to the woman whom he looked upon already as almost his wife--a
letter which no man need have been ashamed of writing, but which a
woman ought not to have read unless she intended to be the writer's
wife.
Millicent had read this letter more than once. She liked it because
it was evidently sincere. The man's heart could be heard beating in
every line of it. Moreover, she had made inquiries that very
morning at the Post Office about the African mail. She wanted the
excitement of another letter like that.
"Oh, Guy Oscard!" she replied innocently to Lady Cantourne; "that
was nothing."
Lady Cantourne kept silence, and presently she returned to her
letters.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE ACCURSED CAMP
Here--judge if hell, with all its power to damn,
Can add one curse to the foul thing I am--
There are some places in the world where a curse seems to brood in
the atmosphere. Msala was one of these. Perhaps these places are
accursed by the deeds that have been done there. Who can tell?
Could the trees--the two gigantic palms that stood by the river's
edge--could these have spoken, they might perhaps have told the tale
of this little inland station in that country where, as the founder
of the hamlet was in the habit of saying, no one knows what is going
on.
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