"By the way, there is a small item in the way of the latest," said Tarrant, carelessly. "Another man has rolled in who had been given up as a dead 'un." "Yes. Is it anybody we know?" asked Nidia, quickly. "I rather think it is," returned Tarrant, watching her face yet while not seeming to. "Ames of Sikumbutana." Nidia caught her breath with a sort of gasp, and her whole face lit up. "Not John Ames?" she cried, as though hanging on the answer. Then, as Tarrant nodded assent, "Oh, I am glad!" And then all of Nidia's old self seemed to return. She poured forth question upon question, hardly waiting to be answered. How had he escaped? Where was he, and when was he coming to see her? and so on-- and so on. "He's rather close on the subject, Miss Commerell," Tarrant replied. "He has a yarn about being chevvied by niggers and tumbling over a _dwala_, and lying unconscious--and then some niggers who knew him piloting him in. He asked after you the first thing, just as if you had never been away from here; and the odd part of it is, he didn't seem in the least surprised to hear you were safe and sound, and quite all right." But the oddness of John Ames' lack of astonishment did not strike Nidia just then. She talked on, quite in her old way--now freely, too--on the subject of her escape and wanderings, making much of the humorous side thereof, and more of the judgment and courage and resource of her guide. Her voice had a glad note about it; a very carol of joy and relief seemed to ring out in every tone. Ever unconventional, it never occurred to her to make the slightest attempt to disguise her feelings. If she was glad that the man who had done so much for her had returned safe and sound, it was not in her to conceal that fact. "Phew! she's giving away the show," Tarrant was thinking to himself. "That first shot of mine _re_ John Ames was a plumb centre. I'll have the crow over old Moseley now. Lucky John Ames!" But at heart he was conscious of a certain not altogether to be controlled sinking. He was not without a weakness for Nidia himself; now, however, in a flash he recognised its utter futility, and was far too much a man of the world not to realise that the sooner he cured himself of it the better.