"Eh? ... Oh! yes; there's been a devil of a shindy. It's quieting down now. I think we've seen the worst of it. I hope it will serve to illustrate how absurdly inadequate our police force is. They've done wonders. There will be a few funerals over this. One or two Europeans killed, worse luck! ... You will? ... Right! We'll keep her with us until you turn up. Good-bye." He rang off, and looked up at Esme with a wry face. "They've heard of the row; and George got the wind up about you. He's motoring in later to fetch you. How did you get through? Were you roughly handled at all?" He surveyed the disorder of her hair, her torn and crumpled dress. She looked as though she had been in the thick of the melee. She nodded. "If Paul hadn't been near I should have been killed," she answered. "That was how we met. I was on my way here when a Kaffir got hold of me. Paul killed him." "Well!" he said, and sat back and stared from one to the other in astonished curiosity. "I take it, that about settles it. It establishes his claim anyway. It seems like an act of Providence that he should be in the right spot at the right moment. I'm not going against that." Hallam put out a hand and drew Esme to his side. "I'm not for allowing any man to interfere between us," he said in quiet authoritative tones. "She's mine all right. We're both agreed as to that." Jim Bainbridge smiled dryly. "So it seems. Well, it's the right course, I've no doubt." He made a mental resolve that he would not be anywhere handy when the explanation with George took place. Thank Heaven, a man had his club to retire to in these domestic crises! "You'd better not show up at the house," he observed to Hallam, "until we've broken the news to Rose. Shocks aren't good for her. I've had as much excitement as I care about for one day." Esme crossed to his chair and stood beside it, resting a hand on his shoulder. "There's one thing more, dear," she said, with brightly flushed cheeks, and eyes carefully averted from Hallam's. "I want you to ring up George and ask him to bring baby and nurse in the car. I am staying with you to-night." "The kid, eh!" Swiftly he glanced at Hallam. Hallam remained rigid and said nothing. Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX. The whole world changed for Esme with the return of the husband she had mourned as dead. But for her sorrow on George Sinclair's account, she could have found in her heart only room for rejoicing in the knowledge that Paul was alive and well instead, as she had been led to believe, of having died mysteriously and alone and been buried in a lonely grave. But the thought of George, of how this must hit him, haunted her distressfully. It grieved her to have to hurt him; he was so altogether fine and good. She felt like a cheat in relation to him. It seemed to her that she had stolen his love, stolen everything he had to give; and now she was about to steal his child from him and leave him sad and alone.