"Every mother thinks that," he retorted. "I don't doubt they are as troublesome as the general run of youngsters. They were here five minutes ago, and all over me. Blest, if they don't seem more at home than I am. Your daughter is a forward little hussy, and as pretty as-- well, as her mother. What!" He smiled at her encouragingly, and leaned with his back against the rail of the stoep, observing her as she stood bareheaded beside him, with only a light wrap over her thin dress. "So you are going to Pretoria?" he said. "I hope you will find your husband better when you get there. If you want any arrangements made at this end, I'll see to it. I suppose you intend to bring him down?" "I hope to," Pamela answered a little doubtfully. "It depends on--on circumstances." "Of course," he agreed. "No good hurrying him. We'll look after the youngsters all right. You need not have them on your mind, anyway." "No," she said, with a quick look of gratitude at him. "You have relieved me of that worry entirely." "My share in it isn't much," he answered, smiling. "As you may have noticed, my wife generally gets her own way. She has always wanted babies, and now she has got 'em. She's upstairs with them now. I was to tell you to go up. The invitation, I understand, does not extend to me." Pamela made a move towards the entrance. At the door she paused and looked back at him over her shoulder. "You're a dear," she said softly, and went inside. "That's the worst of these ingratiating women," Carruthers reflected. "They always contrive to get round one somehow." CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT. The mood in which Dare started on the journey to Pretoria was one of mingled sensations. A persuasion of irreparable loss qualified the immediate satisfaction he experienced in being uninterruptedly alone with Pamela. The joy he felt in having her to himself, withdrawn from outside influences, from ties and conventional restrictions, was considerably reduced when he reflected that this present close companionship was the forerunner of a more complete separation than any they had previously known. They were acting in deliberate concert in closing all the tracks which had led to the converging of their life paths, making it impossible that they should ever cross again. In doing this together they lost sight for the time of the reality of parting. There was a flavour of adventure in the proceeding which Dare at least appreciated; although it foreshadowed the inevitable parting, it seemed to set it further apart,--a vague forbidding cloud which threatened to break and deluge them later, but loomed remotely on the horizon of the present, a misfortune that some unforeseen agency might yet avert.