A few days after my conversation with Sir Alfred Milner, which took place during the course of a dinner at Government House, I took opportunity to mention it to Rhodes.  I tried to clear his mind of the suspicions that I knew he entertained in regard to the High Commissioner.  Cecil Rhodes listened to me with attention, then asked me in that sarcastic tone of his, which was so intensely disagreeable and offensive, whether I was in love with Sir Alfred, as I had so suddenly become his champion.  Then he ended, “You are trying to make me believe the impossible.”  I did not allow him, however, to ruffle me, as evidently was his desire, but replied that when one came to know better those whom one had only met occasionally, without ever having talked with them seriously, it was natural to amend one’s opinion accordingly.  I told him, too, that my earlier misapprehension had been intensified by a certain lady who posed as Rhodes’ greatest friend, and who had been loud in her denunciations of the High Commissioner, long before I had ever met him.  But now, I added, I had come to the conclusion that Sir Alfred had been terribly maligned.

At this point Rhodes interrupted me with the remark:  “So you think that he is a paragon.  Well, I won’t contradict you, and, besides, you know that I have always defended him; but still, with all his virtues, he has not yet found out what he ought to do with me.”

“What can one do with you, Mr. Rhodes?” I asked with a smile.

“Leave me alone,” was the characteristic reply, in a tone which was sufficient for me to follow the advice, as it meant that the man was getting restive and might at any moment break out into one of those fits of rage which he so often used as a means to bring to an end a conversation in which he felt that he might not come out as victor.

A few days later a rabid Rhodesian who happened to be staying at Groote Schuur approached me.  “You have been trying to convert Mr. Rhodes to Sir Alfred,” he remarked.

“I have done nothing of the kind,” I said.  “I am not a preacher, but I have been telling Mr. Rhodes that he was mistaken if he thought that he had an enemy in the High Commissioner.”

“Had you any reason to suppose that he considered him one?” was the unexpected question.

“Well, from what I have seen it seemed to me that you have all been doing your best to persuade him that such was the case,” I retorted, “and why you should have done so passes my comprehension.”

The conversation dropped, but the incident confirmed me in my opinion that strong forces were at work to sow enmity between Rhodes and Sir Alfred Milner for fear the influence of the High Commissioner might bring Rhodes to look at things differently.  As things stood at the moment, Rhodes was persuaded that the High Commissioner hated him, was jealous of him, wanted him out of his path, and never meant to allow him under any circumstances whatever to have any say in the