It was a triumph for Jasmine, for otherwise Stafford would not have gone.  Whether she would have insisted on Jigger going to Glencader if it had not meant that Ian would go also, it would be hard to say.  Her motives were not unmixed, though there had been a real impulse to do all she could.  In any case, she had lessened the distance between Ian and herself, and that gave her wilful mind a rather painful pleasure.  Also, the responsibility for Jigger’s well-being, together with her duties as hostess, had prevented her from dwelling on that scene in the silent house at midnight which had shocked her so—­her husband reeling up the staircase, singing a ribald song.

The fullest significance of this incident had not yet come home to her.  She had fought against dwelling on it, and she was glad that every moment since they had come to Glencader had been full; that Rudyard had been much away with the shooters, and occupied in trying to settle a struggle between the miners and the proprietors of the mine itself, of whom he was one.  Still, things that Rudyard had said before he left the house to dine with Wallstein, leaving her with Stafford, persistently recurred to her mind.

“What’s the matter?” had been Rudyard’s troubled cry.  “We’ve got everything—­everything, and yet—!” Her eyes were not opened.  She had had a shock, but it had not stirred the inner, smothered life; there had been no real revelation.  She was agitated and disturbed—­no more.  She did not see that the man she had married to love and to cherish was slowly changing—­was the change only a slow one now?—­before her eyes; losing that brave freshness which had so appealed to London when he first came back to civilization.  Something had been subtracted from his personality which left it poorer, something had been added which made it less appealing.  Something had given way in him.  There had been a subsidence of moral energy, and force had inwardly declined, though to all outward seeming he had played a powerful and notable part in the history of the last three years, gaining influence in many directions, without suffering excessive notoriety.

On the day Rudyard married Jasmine he would have cut off his hand rather than imagine that he would enter his wife’s room helpless from drink and singing a song which belonged to loose nights on the Limpopo and the Vaal.

As the little group drew back, their curiosity satisfied, Mr. Mappin, putting the case carefully into his pocket again, said to Jasmine: 

“The boy is going on so well that I am not needed longer.  Mr. Wharton, my locum tenens, will give him every care.”

“When did you think of going?” Jasmine asked him, as they all moved on towards the hall, where the other guests were assembled.

“To-morrow morning early, if I may.  No night travel for me, if I can help it.”

“I am glad you are not going to-night,” she answered, graciously.  “Al’mah is arriving this afternoon, and she sings for us this evening.  Is it not thrilling?”