He was gone with the words, silent as a shadow on the wall, and Kelly was left wondering why he had not seized the bearer of evil tidings and kicked the horrible laughter out of him.

“Faith, I’ll do it when I get to Brennerstadt,” he said to himself vindictively.  “But it’s friends first, eh, Burke, my lad?—­Ah, Burke, my boy, friends first!”

CHAPTER XI

THE SHARP CORNER

Was it only a few months since last she had looked out over the barren veldt from the railway at Ritzen?  It seemed to Sylvia like half a lifetime.

In the dark of the early morning she sat in the southward-bound train on her way to Brennerstadt, and tried to recall her first impressions.  There he had stood under the lamp waiting for her—­the man whom she had taken for Guy.  She saw herself springing to meet him with eager welcome on her lips and swift-growing misgiving at her heart.  How good he had been to her!  That thought came up above the rest, crowding out the memory of her first terrible dismay.  He had surrounded her with a care as chivalrous as any of the friends of her former life could have displayed.  He had sheltered her from the dreadful loneliness, and from the world upon the mercy of which she had been so completely thrown.  He had not seemed to bestow, but she realized now how at every turn his goodness had provided, his strength had shielded.  He had not suffered her to feel the obligation under which she was placed.  He had treated her merely as a comrade in distress.  He had given her freely the very best that a man could offer, and he had done it in a fashion that had made acceptance easy, almost inevitable.

Her thoughts travelled onwards till they came to her marriage.  Again the memory of the man’s unfailing chivalry came before all else.  Again, how good he had been to her!  And she had taken full advantage of his goodness.  For the first time she wondered if she had been justified in so doing.  She asked herself if she had behaved contemptibly.  She had not been ready to make a full surrender, and he had not asked for it.  But it seemed to her now that she had returned his gifts with a niggardliness which must have made her appear very small-minded.  He had been great.  He had subordinated his wishes to her.  He had been patient; ah yes, perhaps too patient!  Probably her utter dependence upon him had made him so.

Slowly her thoughts passed on to the coming of Guy.  She realized that the rapid events that had succeeded his coming had rendered her impressions of Burke a little blurred.  Through all those first stages of Guy’s illness, she could scarcely recall him at all.  Her mind was full of the image of Kieff, subtle, cruel, almost ghoulish, a man of deep cunning and incomprehensible motives.  It had suited his whim to save Guy.  She had often wondered why.  She was certain that no impulse of affection