Jasmine had been trying to ask a question concerning her husband ever since the man had mentioned his name, and had not been able to do so.  She had never spoken of him directly to any one since she had left England; had never heard from him; had written him no word; was, so far as the outer acts of life were concerned, as distant from him as Corporal Shorter was from his native Bendigo.  She had been busy as she had never before been in her life, in a big, comprehensive, useful way.  It had seemed to her in England, as she carried through the negotiations for the Valoria, fitted it out for the service it was to render, directed its administration over the heads of the committee appointed, for form’s sake, to assist Lady Tynemouth and herself, that the spirit of her grandfather was over her, watching her, inspiring her.  This had become almost an obsession with her.  Her grandfather had had belief in her, delight in her; and now the innumerable talks she had had with him, as to the way he had done things, gave her confidence and a key to what she had to do.  It was the first real work; for what she did for Ian Stafford in diplomacy was only playing upon the weakness of human nature with a skilled intelligence, with an instinctive knowledge of men and a capacity for managing them.  The first real pride she had ever felt soothed her angry soul.

Her grandfather had been more in her mind than any one else—­than either Rudyard or Ian Stafford.  Towards both of these her mind had slowly and almost unconsciously changed, and she wished to think about neither.  There had been a revolution in her nature, and all her tragic experience, her emotions, and her faculties, had been shaken into a crucible where the fire of pain and revolt burned on and on and on.  From the crucible there had come as yet no precipitation of life’s elements, and she scarcely knew what was in her heart.  She tried to smother every thought concerning the past.  She did not seek to find her bearings, or to realize in what country of the senses and the emotions she was travelling.

One thing was present, however, at times, and when it rushed over her in its fulness, it shook her as the wind shakes the leaf on a tree—­a sense of indignation, of anger, or resentment.  Against whom?  Against all.  Against Rudyard, against Ian Stafford; but most of all, a thousand times most against a dead man, who had been swept out of life, leaving behind a memory which could sting murderously.

Now, when she heard of Rudyard’s bravery at Wortmann’s Drift, a curious thrill of excitement ran through her veins, or it would be truer to say that a sensation new and strange vibrated in her blood.  She had heard many tales of valour in this war, and more than one hero of the Victoria Cross had been in her charge at Durban; but as a child’s heart might beat faster at the first words of a wonderful story, so she felt a faint suffocation in the throat and her brooding eyes took on a brighter, a more objective look, as she heard the tale of Wortmann’s Drift.