Arnott made no response. The expression of her reason for her selection seemed to him in the circumstances uncalled for. "You don't dislike the name, I hope?" she asked. "No. I don't say I'd choose it. It's rather Welsh, isn't it?" "It's British," she replied, "anyway." "Look here!" he said, dismissing the subject of the baby's name, and fumbling in his pocket for the present which he had brought out with him, "I've something here for a good girl." He leaned forward and dropped the case into her lap. Pamela took it up and opened it carelessly. She was growing a little bored with having to express gratitude so frequently for his thought for her. "Another!" she said, and held the bracelet in a languid hand. She made no effort to try it on. "You really shouldn't be so extravagant, Herbert. I have more jewellery than I can possibly wear." He went round to her chair and slipped the bracelet on her arm and fastened it. "It's pretty," he said... "You like it?" "It's beautiful," she replied. "And my thanks?" he said. He leaned over her. Flushed, faintly reluctant Pamela lifted her face in response. He kissed her eagerly. She always failed to understand his appreciation of these exacted caresses. It was one of his peculiarities that he enjoyed what he gained masterfully more than what was voluntarily ceded. CHAPTER EIGHT. Dare sat on the stoep of his hotel in Johannesburg reading a letter from Mrs Carruthers, who kept up a spasmodic correspondence with him at his own urgent request; her letters, he explained, gave him a sense of living still in the world. One clause in this letter interested him particularly; it was a clause which referred to Pamela. "I have just returned," the writer stated, "from the christening of the Arnott baby,--a querulous man-child whom I have undertaken to keep uncontaminated from the wiles of the devil,--a preposterous thing to ask one human being to do for another. Being a childless woman myself, I am more afraid of my godson than of the devil, the latter being so conveniently unsubstantial. Whether it is the added cares of maternity, or due to the fact that the connubial bliss I once dilated upon to you is not so assertive as it was a year ago, your sweet-faced divinity is decidedly less prepossessing in appearance. I would never have believed that a year could age a woman as it has aged Pamela Arnott. Besides looking older, she is considerably less gay. But she is a dear woman, all the same." The writer passed on to other matters, and mentioned that she was glad there was a chance of seeing him shortly. She hoped while he was in Cape Town he would spare them a few days.