“Beggin’ your pardon, missie, but you’ll let me wish you joy?” he said.  “I heard the good news this morning.”

She stood still.  His friendly look went straight to her heart, stirring in her an urgent need for sympathy.

“Oh, Jeffcott,” she said, “I’d never have given in if Mr. Ranger hadn’t stopped writing.”

“Lor!” said Jeffcott.  “Did he now?” He frowned for an instant.  “But—–­didn’t you have a letter from him last week?” he questioned.  “Friday morning it were.  I see Evans, the postman, and he said as there were a South African letter for you.  Weren’t that from Mr. Ranger, missie?”

“What?” said Sylvia sharply.

“Last Friday it were,” the old man repeated firmly.  “Why, I see the letter in his hand top of the pile when he stopped in the drive to speak to me.  We both of us passed a remark on it.”

Sylvia was staring at him.  “Jeffcott, are you sure?” she said.

“Sure as I stand here, Miss Sylvia,” he returned.  “I couldn’t have made no mistake.  Didn’t you have it then, missie?  I’ll swear to heaven it were there.”

“No,” Sylvia said.  “I didn’t have it.”  She paused a moment; then very slowly, “The last letter I had from Guy Ranger,” she said, “was more than six weeks ago—­the day that the squire brought Madam to the Manor.”

“Lor!” ejaculated old Jeffcott again.  “But wherever could they have got to, Miss Sylvia?  Don’t Bliss have the sortin’ of the letters?”

“I—­don’t—­know.”  Sylvia was gazing straight before her with that in her face which frightened the old man.  “Those letters have been—­kept back.”

She turned from him with the words, and suddenly she was running, running swiftly up the path.

Like a young animal released from bondage she darted out of his sight, and Jeffcott returned to his hedge-trimming with pursed lips.  That last glimpse of Miss Sylvia’s face had—­to express it in his own language—­given him something of a turn.

It had precisely the same effect upon Sylvia’s step-mother a little later, when the girl burst in upon her as she sat writing letters in her boudoir.

She looked round at her in amazement, but she had no time to ask for an explanation, for Sylvia, white to the lips, with eyes of flame, went straight to the attack.  She was in such a whirlwind of passion as had never before possessed her.

She was panting, yet she spoke with absolute distinctness.  “I have just found out,” she said, “how it is that I have had no letters from Guy during the past six weeks.  They have been—­stolen.”

“Really, Sylvia!” said Mrs. Ingleton.  She arose in wrath, but no wrath had any effect upon Sylvia at that moment.  She was girt for battle—­the deadliest battle she had ever known.

“You took them!” she said, pointing an accusing finger full at her step-mother.  “You kept them back!  Deny it as much as you like—­as much as you dare!  None but you would have stooped to do such a thing.  And it has been done.  The letters have been delivered—­and I have not received them.  I have suffered—­horribly—­because of it.  You meant me to suffer!’