From her mother Rachel had inherited more, for instance her grace of
speech and bearing, and her intuition, or foresight. Only in her case this
curious gift did not dominate her, her other forces held it in check. She
felt and she knew, but feeling and knowledge did not frighten or make her
weak, any more than the strength of her frame or of her spirit made her
unwomanly. She accepted these things as part of her mental equipment, that
was all, being aware that to her a door was opened which is shut firmly
enough in the faces of most folk, but not on that account in the least
afraid of looking through it as her mother was.

Thus when she saw the man called Ishmael, she knew well enough that he was
destined to bring great evil upon her and hers, as when as a child she met
the boy Richard Darrien, she had known other things. But she did not,
therefore, fear the man and his attendant evil. She only shrank from the
first and looked through the second, onward and outward to the ultimate
good which she was convinced lay at the end of everything, and meanwhile,
being young and merry, she found his zebra-skin trousers very ridiculous.

Just as Rachel and her mother finished their conversation about Mr.
Ishmael, Mr. Dove arrived from a little Kloof, where he had been engaged
with the Kaffirs in cutting bushes to make a thorn fence round their camp
as a protection against lions and hyenas. He looked older than when we
last met him, and save for a fringe of white hair, which increased his
monkish appearance, was quite bald. His face, too, was even thinner and
more eager, and his grey eyes were more far-away than formerly; also he
had grown a long white beard.

"Where did that buck come from?" he asked, looking at the dead creature.