“Yes, I’m tired—­rather,” he added to his guest with a sudden weariness of manner.  “I’ve had no sleep for three nights—­working all the time, every hour; and in this air of London, which doesn’t feed you, one needs plenty of sleep.  You can’t play with yourself here as you can on the high veld, where an hour or two of sleep a day will do.  On-saddle and off-saddle, in-span and outspan, plenty to eat and a little sleep; and the air does the rest.  It has been a worrying time.”

“The Jameson Raid—­and all the rest?”

“Particularly all the rest.  I feel easier in my mind about Dr. Jim and the others.  England will demand—­so I understand,” he added with a careful look at her, as though he had said too much—­“the right to try Jameson and his filibusters from Matabeleland here in England; but it’s different with the Jo’burgers.  They will be arrested—­”

“They have been arrested,” she intervened.

“Oh, is it announced?” he asked without surprise.

“It was placarded an hour ago,” she replied, heavily.

“Well, I fancied it would be,” he remarked.  “They’ll have a close squeak.  The sympathy of the world is with Kruger—­so far.”

“That is what I have come about,” she said, with an involuntary and shrinking glance at the sketches on the walls.

“What you have come about?” he said, putting down his cup of tea and looking at her intently.”  How are you concerned?  Where do you come in?”

“There is a man—­he has been arrested with the others; with Farrar, Phillips, Hammond, and the rest—­”

“Oh, that’s bad!  A relative, or—­”

“Not a relative, exactly,” she replied in a tone of irony.  Rising, she went over to the wall and touched one of the water-colour sketches.

“How did you come by these?” she asked.

“Blantyre’s sketches?  Well, it’s all I ever got for all Blantyre owed me, and they’re not bad.  They’re lifted out of the life.  That’s why I bought them.  Also because I liked to think I got something out of Blantyre; and that he would wish I hadn’t.  He could paint a bit—­ don’t you think so?”

“He could paint a bit—­always,” she replied.

A silence followed.  Her back was turned to him, her face was towards the pictures.

Presently he spoke, with a little deferential anxiety in the tone.  “Are you interested in Blantyre?” he asked, cautiously.  Getting up, he came over to her.

“He has been arrested—­as I said—­with the others.”

“No, you did not say so.  So they let Blantyre into the game, did they?” he asked almost musingly; then, as if recalling what she had said, he added:  “Do you mind telling me exactly what is your interest in Blantyre?”

She looked at him straight in the eyes.  For a face naturally so full of humour, hers was strangely dark with stormy feeling now.

“Yes, I will tell you as much as I can—­enough for you to understand,” she answered.