“I?” said Mrs. Merston, and laughed again her caustic, mirthless laugh.  “No!  My acquaintance with Brennerstadt is of a less amusing nature.  When I go there, I merely go to be ill, and as soon as I am partially recovered, I come back—­to this.”  There was inexpressible bitterness in her voice.  “Some day,” she said, ’"I shall go there to die.  That is all I have to look forward to now.”

“Oh, don’t!” Sylvia said, with quick feeling.  “Don’t, please!  You shouldn’t feel like that.”

Mrs. Merston’s face was twisted in a painful smile.  She looked into the girl’s face with a kind of cynical pity.  “You will come to it,” she said.  “Life isn’t what it was to you even now.  You’re beginning to feel the thorns under the rose-leaves.  Of course you may be lucky.  You may bear children, and that will be your salvation.  But if you don’t—­if you don’t——­”

“Please!” whispered Sylvia.  “Please don’t say that to me!”

The words were almost inarticulate.  She got up as she uttered them and moved away.  Mrs. Merston looked after her, and very strangely her face altered.  Something of that mother-love in her which had so long been cheated showed in her lustreless eyes.

“Oh, poor child!” she said.  “I am sorry.”

It was briefly spoken.  She was ever brief in her rare moments of emotion.  But there was a throb of feeling in the words that reached Sylvia.  She turned impulsively back again.

“Thank you,” she said, and there were tears in her eyes as she spoke.  “I think perhaps—­” her utterance came with an effort “—­my life is—­in its way—­almost as difficult as yours.  That ought to make us comrades, oughtn’t it?  If ever there is anything I can do to help you, please tell me!”

“Let it be a mutual understanding!” said Mrs. Merston, and to Sylvia’s surprise she took and pressed her hand for a moment.

There was more comfort in that simple pressure than Sylvia could have believed possible.  She returned it with that quick warmth of hers which never failed to respond to kindness, and in that second the seed of friendship was sown upon fruitful ground.

The moment passed, sped by Mrs. Merston who seemed half-afraid of her own action.

“You must get your husband to take you to Brennerstadt for the races,” she said.  “It would make a change for you.  It’s a shame for a girl of your age to be buried in the wilderness.”

“I really haven’t begun to be dull yet,” Sylvia said.

“No, perhaps not.  But you’ll get nervy and unhappy.  You’ve been used to society, and it isn’t good for you to go without it entirely.  Look at me!” said Mrs. Merston, with her short laugh.  “And take warning!”

The two men were sauntering towards them, and they moved to meet them.  Far down in the east an almost unbelievably huge moon hung like a brazen shield.  The mauve of the sunset had faded to pearl.