“Now, what do you know of the Limpopo?  I’ll venture there isn’t another woman in England who even knows the name.”

“I always had a thirst for travel, and I’ve read endless books of travel and adventure,” she replied.  “I’d have been an explorer, or a Cecil Rhodes, if I had been a man.”

“Can you ride?” he asked, looking wonderingly at her tiny hand, her slight figure, her delicate face with its almost impossible pink and white.

“Oh, man of little faith!” she rejoined.  “I can’t remember when I didn’t ride.  First a Shetland pony, and now at last I’ve reached Zambesi—­such a wicked dear.”

“Zambesi—­why Zambesi?  One would think you were South African.”

She enjoyed his mystification.  Then she grew serious and her eyes softened.  “I had a friend—­a girl, older than I. She married.  Well, he’s an earl now, the Earl of Tynemouth, but he was the elder son then, and wild for sport.  They went on their honeymoon to shoot in Africa, and they visited the falls of the Zambesi.  She, my friend, was standing on the edge of the chasm—­perhaps you know it—­not far from Livingstone’s tree, between the streams.  It was October, and the river was low.  She put up her big parasol.  A gust of wind suddenly caught it, and instead of letting the thing fly, she hung on, and was nearly swept into the chasm.  A man with them pulled her back in time—­but she hung on to that red parasol.  Only when it was all over did she realize what had really happened.  Well, when she came back to England, as a kind of thank-offering she gave me her father’s best hunter.  That was like her, too; she could always make other people generous.  He is a beautiful Satan, and I rechristened him Zambesi.  I wanted the red parasol, too, but Alice Tynemouth wouldn’t give it to me.”

“So she gave it to the man who pulled her back.  Why not?”

“How do you know she did that?”

“Well, it hangs in an honoured place in Stafford’s chambers.  I conjecture right, do I?”

Her eyes darkened slowly, and a swift-passing shadow covered her faintly smiling lips; but she only said, “You see he was entitled to it, wasn’t he?” To herself, however, she whispered, “Neither of them—­neither ever told me that.”

At that moment the door opened, and a footman came forward to Rudyard Byng.  “If you please, sir, your servant says, will you see him.  There is news from South Africa.”

Byng rose, but Jasmine intervened.  “No, tell him to come here,” she said to the footman.  “Mayn’t he?” she asked.

Byng nodded, and remained standing.  He seemed suddenly lost to her presence, and with head dropped forward looked into space, engrossed, intense.