Of this, however, she would not speak at all. In the Casino, she went straight to the side of the formidable Miss Aston, and began to babble some idle excuse for our delay. McShanus himself was playing at Petits Chevaux and making the room ring with his exclamations. I understood that the hour for confidence had passed, and that the words she had meant to speak to me might go for ever unspoken. Was it well that this should be? God knows. The path of my duty lay clearly marked before me. Not even the hand of Joan Fordibras must turn me aside therefrom. I could but hope that time would lift the shadows and let me see the sun beyond them. CHAPTER VIII. WE VISIT AFRICA. _The Voyage of the_ “_White Wings._” “And what, in Truth’s name, brings ye to such a shore as this?” I had been standing to spy out the low African coast, and had forgotten the very existence of Timothy McShanus until he spoke to me. Just, indeed, his question appeared to be. Why had I left Europe, my home, my friends, to visit this desolate No-Man’s-Land, speaking to us as it did of the ultimate desolation and the far kingdoms of solitude? Why had I chosen such a course—and, almost greater wonder, why was such a man as Timothy McShanus aboard with me? We had left Dieppe almost a month ago. The fastest yacht afloat, as I liked to call our _White Wings_, had permitted us to call for a day or two at Gib., to put in at Porto Grande in the Cape de Verde Islands; thence to cruise almost at our leisure by the great flat African shore until the hills began to show themselves beyond the surf, and we knew that we were gazing upon English land once more. The question “Why?” remained none the less an enigma to the ship. The men could but call their employer a crank, and justly marvel at his ideas. Timothy McShanus alone ventured to exclaim upon them. “Ye pick me up at Dieppe,” said he, “and tell me ’tis a bit of a pleasure voyage. I don’t refuse ye, thinking that we will sail away to Spain and twirl a while with the señoritas; but divil a señorita in all the journey. Ye dose me with Spanish wine at Gibralthar, and say I shall keep Christmas in Pall Mall—me that was never out of London a week but I fell to weeping for me children. And here we are in the Old Man’s counthry, and swim ye must would ye go ashore. Ah, be honest with a man, Ean, me bhoy. Ye’re afther something deep, and none but the little Jap has the secret of it. Say ’tis so, and I, Timothy, will trust ye to the world’s end.” “Timothy,” I rejoined, for the time had come when I must speak openly with him, “you know me well enough to say that I am neither a fool nor a child. I’ll tell you in a word why I came to Africa. It was to learn who stole my bronze pearls which Joan Fordibras wore at Kensington.”