Then he recalled the brief letter he had written her in reply.  Unlike him, she had not kept his answer, when it came into her hands, but, tearing it up into fifty fragments, had thrown it into the waste-basket, and paced her room in shame, anger and humiliation.  Finally, she had taken the waste-basket and emptied it into the flames.  She had watched the tiny fragments burn in a fire not hotter than that in her own eyes, which presently were washed by a flood of bitter tears and passionate and unavailing protest.  For hours she had sobbed, and when she went out into the world the next day, it was with his every word ringing in her ears, as they had rung ever since:  the sceptic comment at every feast, the ironical laughter behind every door, the whispered detraction in every loud accent of praise.

“Dear Jasmine,” his letter had run, “it is kind of you to tell me of your intended marriage before it occurs, for in these distant lands news either travels slowly or does not reach one at all.  I am fortunate in having my information from the very fountain of first knowledge.  You have seen and done much in the past year; and the end of it all is more fitting than the most meticulous artist could desire or conceive.  You will adorn the new sphere into which you enter.  You are of those who do not need training or experience:  you are a genius, whose chief characteristic is adaptability.  Some people, to whom nature and Providence have not been generous live up to things; to you it is given to live down to them; and no one can do it so well.  We have had good times together—­happy conversations and some cheerful and entertaining dreams and purposes.  We have made the most of opportunity, each in his and her own way.  But, my dear Jasmine, don’t ever think that you will need to come to me for advice and to learn to be wise.  I know of no one from whom I could learn, from whom I have learned, so I much.  I am deeply your debtor for revelations which never could have come to me without your help.  There is a wonderful future before you, whose variety let Time, not me, attempt to reveal.  I shall watch your going on”—­(he did not say goings on)—­“your Alpine course, with clear memories of things and hours dearer to me than all the world, and with which I would not have parted for the mines of the Rand.  I lose them now for nothing—­and less than nothing.  I shall be abroad for some years, and, meanwhile, a new planet will swim into the universe of matrimony.  I shall see the light shining, but its heavenly orbit will not be within my calculations.  Other astronomers will watch, and some no doubt will pray, and I shall read in the annals the bright story of the flower that was turned into a star!

“Always yours sincerely,
Ian Stafford.”

From the filmy ashes of her letter to him Stafford now turned away to his writing-table.  There he sat for a while and answered several notes, among them one to Alice Mayhew, now the Countess of Tynemouth, whose red parasol still hung above the mantel-piece, a relic of the Zambesi—­and of other things.