I handed her in answer my own paper.  She read it with a faint flush.  When she came to the words:  “Either she is not Yorke-Bannerman’s daughter; or else, Yorke-Bannerman was not a poisoner, and someone else was—­I might put a name to him,” she rose to her feet with a great rush of long-suppressed feeling, and clasped me passionately.  “My Hubert!” she cried, “I read you aright.  I knew it!  I was sure of you!”

I folded her in my arms, there, on the rusty-red South African desert.  “Then, Hilda dear,” I murmured, “you will consent to marry me?”

The words brought her back to herself.  She unfolded my arms with slow reluctance.  “No, dearest,” she said, earnestly, with a face where pride fought hard against love.  “That is why, above all things, I did not want you to follow me.  I love you; I trust you:  you love me; you trust me.  But I never will marry anyone till I have succeeded in clearing my father’s memory.  I know he did not do it; I know Sebastian did.  But that is not enough.  I must prove it, I must prove it!”

“I believe it already,” I answered.  “What need, then, to prove it?”

“To you, Hubert?  Oh, no; not to you.  There I am safe.  But to the world that condemned him—­condemned him untried.  I must vindicate him; I must clear him!”

I bent my face close to hers.  “But may I not marry you first?” I asked—­“and after that, I can help you to clear him.”

She gazed at me fearlessly.  “No, no!” she cried, clasping her hands; “much as I love you, dear Hubert, I cannot consent to it.  I am too proud!—­too proud!  I will not allow the world to say—­not even to say falsely”—­her face flushed crimson; her voice dropped low—­“I will not allow them to say those hateful words, ’He married a murderer’s daughter.’”

I bowed my head.  “As you will, my darling,” I answered.  “I am content to wait.  I trust you in this, too.  Some day, we will prove it.”

And all this time, preoccupied as I was with these deeper concerns, I had not even asked where Hilda lived, or what she was doing!

CHAPTER VII

THE EPISODE OF THE STONE THAT LOOKED ABOUT IT

Hilda took me back with her to the embryo farm where she had pitched her tent for the moment; a rough, wild place.  It lay close to the main road from Salisbury to Chimoio.

Setting aside the inevitable rawness and newness of all things Rhodesian, however, the situation itself was not wholly unpicturesque.  A ramping rock or tor of granite, which I should judge at a rough guess to extend to an acre in size, sprang abruptly from the brown grass of the upland plain.  It rose like a huge boulder.  Its summit was crowned by the covered grave of some old Kaffir chief—­a rude cairn of big stones under a thatched awning.  At the foot of this jagged and cleft rock the farmhouse