I Forbid the Banns! — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

I2 “T FORBID THE BANNS!” his health and had caused him to feel now and again that he had seen his best days. He had seen his best days, consequently the Colonial Office had appointed him high commissioner. Miss Travers had met Mr. Charlton at a Government House dinner; then he had dined at the residence of the high commissioner and had enjoyed some horse exercise with Miss Travers and her father upon the Flats; and when it was understood that Miss Travers was going ona visit to England for a month or two in the company of her friend Mrs. Howard, the wife of Major Howard of the Engineers, and that Mr. Charlton was taking his departure by the same steamship, no one at the Cape regarded the matter in the light of a remarkable coincidence. It is pretty generally understood that the development of a certain friendliness between a young man anda maiden is largely, but not wholly, dependent upon their environ- ment. Miss Travers had not lived for many years in the world, but she had lived quite long enough to have become fully aware of this fact. She had good reason to believe that a friendship which is begun on land may be consoli- dated on the sea, even though the element is by no means suggestive of consolidation, but just the opposite. She had known of instances in which a friendship begun on land had developed into something very much stronger on sea. All the same, however, it was on the verge of insolence for Mr. Southcote to smile at her in the way he had smiled, giving her to understand that it was in his power to scrutinize her very soul. It would not have been so irrita- ting if she could but have felt that he had failedto perceive what was on her mind, if not exactly upon her soul. But when it so happened that she found it necessary to assure herself that Mr. Southcote was a self-conceited coxcomb who flattered himself on being so extremely clever that he could scrutinize at will the soul of a young woman, when CONnNIElOOKSa!