She was still trembling a little, but she had regained her self-command.  “I’m sorry I was such a little beast,” she said.  “But you’ve got me beat.  I’ll try and make good somehow.”

He found his voice at that.  It came with an odd harshness.  “Don’t!” he said.  “Don’t!—­You’re not—­beat.  The battle isn’t always to the strong.”

She laughed faintly with more assurance, though still somewhat shakily.  “Not when the strong are too generous to take advantage, perhaps.  Thank you for that, partner.  Now—­do you mind if I take Guy his nourishment?”

She put the matter behind her with that inimitable lightness of hers which of late she had seemed to have lost.  She went from him to wait upon Guy with the tremulous laugh upon her lips, and when she returned she had fully recovered her self-control, and talked with him upon many matters connected with the farm which he had not heard her mention during all the period of her nursing.  She displayed all her old zest.  She spoke as one keenly interested.  But behind it all was a feverish unrest, a nameless, intangible quality that had never characterized her in former days.  She was elusive.  Her old delicate confidence in him was absent.  She walked warily where once she had trodden without the faintest hesitation.

When the meal was over, she checked him as he was on the point of going to Guy.  “How soon ought we to start for the Merstons?” she asked.

He paused a moment.  Then, “I will let you off to-day,” he said.  “We will ride out to the kopje instead.”

He thought she would hail this concession with relief, but she shook her head instantly, her face deeply flushed.

“No, I think not!  We will go to the Merstons—­if Guy is well enough.  We really ought to go.”

She baffled him completely.  He turned away.  “As you will,” he said.  “We ought to start in two hours.”

“I shall be ready,” said Sylvia.

CHAPTER III

THE SEED

“Well!” said Mrs. Merston, with her thin smile.  “Are you still enjoying the Garden of Eden, Mrs. Ranger?”

Sylvia, white and tired after her ride, tried to smile in answer and failed.  “I shall be glad when the winter is over,” she said.

Mrs. Merston’s colourless eyes narrowed a little, taking her in.  “You don’t look so blooming as you did,” she remarked.  “I hear you have had Guy Ranger on your hands.”

“Yes,” Sylvia said, and coloured a little in spite of herself.

“What has been the matter with him?” demanded Mrs. Merston.

Sylvia hesitated, and in a moment the older woman broke into a grating laugh.

“Oh, you needn’t trouble to dress it up in polite language.  I know the malady he suffers from.  But I wonder Burke would allow you to have anything to do with it.  He has a reputation for being rather particular.”