“Finish the drink anyhow!” he said.

She hesitated momentarily, but he pushed the glass firmly towards her and she obeyed.

She stood up then and faced him.  “Will you please tell me one thing—­to—­to set my mind at rest?  Guy—­Guy isn’t ill?”

He looked her straight in the face.  “No.”

“You are sure?” she said.

“Yes.”  He spoke with curt decision, yet oddly she wondered for a fleeting second if he had told her the truth.

His look seemed to challenge the doubt, to beat it down.  Half shyly, she held out her hand.

“Good night,” she said.

His fingers grasped and released it.  He turned with her to the door.  “I will show you your room” he said.

CHAPTER VII

THE WRONG TURNING

Sylvia slept that night the heavy, unstirring sleep of utter weariness though when she lay down she scarcely expected to sleep at all.  The shock, the bewilderment, the crushing dread, that had attended her arrival after the long, long journey had completely exhausted her mentally, and physically.  She slept as a child sleeps at the end of a strenuous day.

When she awoke, the night was gone and all the world was awake and moving.  The clouds had all passed, and a brilliant morning sun shone down upon the wide street below her window.  She felt refreshed though the heat was still great.  The burden that had overwhelmed her the night before did not seem so intolerable by morning light.  Her courage had come back to her.

She dressed with a firm determination to carry a brave face whatever lay before her.  Things could not be quite so bad as they had seemed the previous night.  Guy could not really have changed so fundamentally.  Perhaps he only feared that she could not endure poverty with him.  If that were all, she would soon teach him otherwise.  All she wanted in life now was his love.

She had almost convinced herself that this was practically all she had to contend with, and the ogre of her fears was well in the background, when she finally left her room and went with some uncertainty through the unfamiliar passages.

She found the entrance, but a crowd of curious Boers collected about the door daunted her somewhat, and she was turning back from their staring eyes when Burke Ranger suddenly strode through the group and joined her.

She gave him a quick, half-startled glance as they met, and the first thing that struck her about him was the obvious fact that he had shaved.  His eyes intercepted hers, and she saw the flicker of a smile pass across them and knew he had read her thought.

She flushed as she held out her hand to him.  “Good morning,” she said with a touch of shyness.  “I hope you haven’t been wasting your time waiting for me.”

He took her hand and turned her towards the small room in which they had talked together the previous night.  “No, I haven’t wasted my time,” he said.  “I hope you have had a good rest?”