Unknown

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her lip, then she said, ‘Do you know, jade also means a worn-out horse.' Embarrassed by his remark, she was trying not to show it. ‘I should have thought, however, that you would have owned a jade dodo. Isn't the largest sports club in Mauritius named after the famous and extinct dodo?’
    ‘You have been doing your homework on your new country, I see. That is good.’
    ‘Marlow wrote about it,’ she said, feeling that it was now time to introduce Marlow into the picture of things. ‘He’s a member.'
    ‘Marlow? He is the man you are going to marry?' They were crossing over a bridge where down below, on the banks of the river, women were at work, thumping the dirt from bright cotton clothing on the rocks. Laurent Sevigny's voice, she thought, had changed.
    ‘Marlow Lewis? Do you know him?' Her eyes left the women below on the rocks and went to the bracelet she was wearing and she began moving it round and round on her wrist. As yet, the finger on her left hand was ringless. Soon, however, there would be an engagement ring and a plain or engraved gold band. For some unknown reason a shudder passed over her.
    ‘Marlow Lewis is a hunter,’ his voice was curt now. ‘I know him slightly. We do not move in the same circles.’ He sounded rude now.
    'He’s a sugar farmer,’ Jade said softly.
    ‘He is also a hunter.’
    After a confused moment she said, ‘I didn't know that. In fact, I didn't know there were wild animals on this island.'
    ‘No? Well, the shooting season lasts three months. It is the winter sport of the island’s privileged set. It is known to the French-speaking community as la chasse. Three thousand head or so of game are shot down every year, to the great delight of the hunter. It was the Dutch who introduced deer from Java.'
    ‘I....’ Suddenly Jade felt sick. ‘I didn't know. Marlow didn’t mention this in his letters to me. Do you hunt?’ She turned to look at Laurent Sevigny, impatient for his reply.
    ‘Like the deer,’ he said, ‘this paradise is also my home. I am not a hunter.’
    I see.' She let out a breath. ‘Where do you live—on the island?’
    ‘I own a house within easy distance of the hotel.’
    'You,’ she fidgeted with her bracelet again, ‘must be married, in that case?’
    Turning to look at her, he snapped. ‘Why? just because I happen to live in a house? But no, I am a confirmed bachelor.’ Suddenly he looked amused and his eyes mocked her.
    Why did she feel so crazily happy? she asked herself. What difference did it make? She was here to marry Marlow Lewis. She supposed she loved Marlow. After all, corresponding for two years had drawn them very close.
    To steady herself she said, ‘Tell me, what are all those pyramid-like things in the sugar fields? I can’t help noticing them. Mound after mound of them.’
    ‘They are piles of volcanic rock,’ he told her. ‘They have been dug up from the earth and piled up that way.’
    ‘And that sweet and heady scent?’ she asked.
    ‘It is the scent of the sugar-cane. As you have probably noticed by now, sugar cane grows everywhere in Mauritius, even right down to the sea and fringing the towns. We have just passed a mill, back there. The smell was heavy there.’
    ‘For a small island,’ she observed, ‘we seem to have travelled a long distance from the airport.’
    ‘We are nearly there,’ he told her. ‘Soon you will meet Nicole de Speville—if not Marlow Lewis.’
    Jade remained silent and then he said, ‘We were talking about jade. Apart from the house, I own a chalet which is in the beautiful grounds of the hotel and this chalet is set like a piece of pale jade on the green lawn.’
    ‘You sound like a very fortunate person,’ she answered, ‘to own both a house and a chalet.’ While she was speaking, she found herself wondering what Marlow’s plantation house was like. She would go there after she was married. Marlow had written to say that it was close enough to the health clinic for her to

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