"I've heard of you, Mr. Stanninghame," said this one, when introductions had been effected. "I hope you have made a success of Johannesburg so far. Everybody turns up here. I can hardly come up to the camp--we used to call it that in the old days. I was among the first up here, you know, and it's difficult to get into the way of calling it the town--I can hardly come up here, I was saying, without meeting some one or other I had known elsewhere." "Yes, it's an astonishing place, Mrs. Falkner," answered Laurence. "Only bare veldt but a very few years ago, now a population of forty thousand--mostly brokers." She laughed, and Lilith cut in: "I thought you were going to adopt the Carlylean definition of the people of England, Mr. Stanninghame." "Oh, that'll come in time. I only trust I may not hold on too long to come under its lash." "Let us hope none of us will," said Mrs. Falkner. "Oh, dear, we are all dreadfully reckless, I fear. We are nothing but gamblers up here. Have you caught the contagion too, Mr. Stanninghame?" "I'm afraid so," he answered, thinking how, even among the softer sex here, King Scrip bore the principal sway. He was thinking of something else at the same time. Lilith was looking even more sweet, more bewitchingly attractive than when last he had seen her. There was a warm seductive glow of health in her dark brilliant beauty, a winsomeness in her simple, tasteful attire--the cool easy-fitting blouse and skirt in a soft harmony of cream colour and light gray, and the plain, wide-brimmed straw hat of the "sailor" kind--which made, to his eyes, an irresistibly entrancing picture. She, no less than himself, was comparing notes--as two people will who have been apart for a space, and have thought much of each other in the interim. He, too, was improved in appearance. The fine climate, the open-air life had lent a deeper bronze to his face and a clearness to his eyes--even as an emancipation from sordid cares, together with a present modicum of success and a prospect of further in the future, had imparted a certain stamp of serenity to his expression which was not there before. "Air, freedom, life's healthier side are good--success is good--all good things are good--behold their result," was Lilith's inner verdict as the summing up of this inspection.