“Mr. Quatermain,” she said, “I suppose that I must have been ill, for the last thing I remember is going to sleep on the night after you started for the hippopotamus hunt.  Where is my father?  Did any harm come to him while he was hunting?”

“Alas!” I answered, lying boldly, for I feared lest the truth should take away her mind again, “it did.  He was trampled upon by a hippopotamus bull, which charged him, and killed, and we were obliged to bury him where he died.”

She bowed her head for a while and muttered some prayer for his soul, then looked at me keenly and said,

“I do not think you are telling me everything, Mr. Quatermain, but something seems to say that this is because it is not well that I should learn everything.”

“No,” I answered, “you have been ill and out of your mind for quite a long while; something gave you a shock.  I think that you learned of your father’s death, which you have now forgotten, and were overcome with the news.  Please trust to me and believe that if I keep anything back from you, it is because I think it best to do so for the present.”

“I trust and I believe,” she answered.  “Now please leave me, but tell me first where are those women and their children?”

“After your father died they went away,” I replied, lying once more.

She looked at me again but made no comment.

Then I left her.

How much Inez ever learned of the true story of her adventures I do not know to this hour, though my opinion is that it was but little.  To begin with, everyone, including Thomaso, was threatened with the direst consequences if he said a word to her on the subject; moreover in her way she was a wise woman, one who knew when it was best not to ask questions.  She was aware that she had suffered from a fit of aberration or madness and that during this time her father had died and certain peculiar things had happened.  There she was content to leave the business and she never again spoke to me upon the subject.  Of this I was very glad, as how on earth could I have explained to her about Ayesha’s prophecies as to her lapse into childishness and subsequent return to a normal state when she reached her home seeing that I did not understand them myself?

Once indeed she did inquire what had become of Janee to which I answered that she had died during her sickness.  It was another lie, at any rate by implication, but I hold that there are occasions when it is righteous to lie.  At least these particular falsehoods have never troubled my conscience.

Here I may as well finish the story of Inez, that is, as far as I can.  As I have shown she was always a woman of melancholy and religious temperament, qualities that seemed to grow upon her after her return to health.  Certainly the religion did, for continually she was engaged in prayer, a development with which heredity may have had something to do, since after he became a reformed character and grew unsettled in his mind, her father followed the same road.