She was roused by a voice.  “Cronje!” it said in a deep, slow, ragged note.

Byng’s half-caste valet, Krool, sombre of face, small, lean, ominous, was standing in the doorway.

“Cronje! . . .  Well?” rejoined Byng, quietly, yet with a kind of smother in the tone.

Krool stretched out a long, skinny, open hand, and slowly closed the fingers up tight with a gesture suggestive of a trap closing upon a crushed captive.

“Where?” Byng asked, huskily.

“Doornkop,” was the reply; and Jasmine, watching closely, fascinated by Krool’s taciturnity, revolted by his immobile face, thought she saw in his eyes a glint of malicious and furtive joy.  A dark premonition suddenly flashed into her mind that this creature would one day, somehow, do her harm; that he was her foe, her primal foe, without present or past cause for which she was responsible; but still a foe—­one of those antipathies foreordained, one of those evil influences which exist somewhere in the universe against every individual life.

“Doornkop—­what did I say!” Byng exclaimed to Jasmine.  “I knew they’d put the double-and-twist on him at Doornkop, or some such place; and they’ve done it—­Kruger and Joubert.  Englishmen aren’t slim enough to be conspirators.  Dr. Jim was going it blind, trusting to good luck, gambling with the Almighty.  It’s bury me deep now.  It’s Paul Kruger licking his chops over the savoury mess.  ’Oh, isn’t it a pretty dish to set before the king!’ What else, Krool?”

“Nothing, Baas.”

“Nothing more in the cables?”

“No, Baas.”

“That will do, Krool.  Wait.  Go to Mr. Whalen.  Say I want him to bring a stenographer and all the Partners—­he’ll understand—­to me at ten to-night.”

“Yes, Baas.”

Krool bowed slowly.  As he raised his head his eyes caught those of Jasmine.  For an instant they regarded each other steadily, then the man’s eyes dropped, and a faint flush passed over his face.  The look had its revelation which neither ever forgot.  A quiver of fear passed through Jasmine, and was followed by a sense of self-protection and a hardening of her will, as against some possible danger.

As Krool left the room he said to himself:  “The Baas speaks her for his vrouw.  But the Baas will go back quick to the Vaal—­p’r’aps.”

Then an evil smile passed over his face, as he thought of the fall of the Rooinek—­of Dr. Jim in Oom Paul’s clutches.  He opened and shut his fingers again with a malignant cruelty.

Standing before the fire, Byng said to Jasmine meditatively, with that old ironic humour which was always part of him:  “’Fee, fo, fi, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.’”

Her face contracted with pain.  “They will take Dr. Jim’s life?” she asked, solemnly.

“It’s hard to tell.  It isn’t him alone.  There’s lots of others that we both know.”

“Yes, yes, of course.  It’s terrible, terrible,” she whispered.