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"It couldn't be any different," she said softly. "No one else could ever come anywhere near him." Jeffcott sighed aloud. "I know he were a nice young gentleman," he conceded. "But I've seen lots as good before and since. He weren't nothing so very extraordinary, Miss Sylvia." Sylvia's look went beyond him, seeming to rest upon something very far away. "He was to me, Jeffcott," she said.
"You ought to get married, Miss Sylvia," said old Jeffcott, the head gardener, with a wag of his hoary beard. "You'll need to be your own mistress now." "I should hope I am that anyway," said, Sylvia with a little laugh. She stood in the great vinery a vivid picture against a background of clustering purple fruit. The sunset glinted on her tawny hair.
"It's a long time for both of us," said Sylvia. "But it hasn't altered us in that respect." "It's been a longer time for him than it has for you," said Jeffcott shrewdly. "I'll warrant he's lived every minute of it. He's the sort that would." Sylvia's wide brows drew together in a little frown. She had caught the note of warning in the old man's words, and she did not understand it.
"We just fitted each other, he and I." "And you was only eighteen," pleaded Jeffcott, "You wasn't full-grown in those days." "No?" A quick sigh escaped her; her look came back to him, and she smiled. "Well, I am now anyway; and that's the one thing that hasn't altered or grown old the one thing that never could." "Ah, dear!" said old Jeffcott.
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.
Some years prior to this, however, Sir John Jeffcott, the first judge of South Australia, and Captain Blenkensorf, the head of the fishery, both found a watery grave in attempting to pass from the Goolwa into Encounter Bay.
"You see, Jeffcott," she said, "there's only one man in the world I could marry. And he's not ready for me yet." Jeffcott wagged his beard again commiseratingly. "So you've never got over it, Miss Sylvia? Your feelings is still the same after five years?" "Still the same," said Sylvia. There was a momentary challenge in her bright eyes, but it passed.
"What do you mean, Jeffcott?" she said, with a touch of sharpness. But Jeffcott backed out of the vinery and out of the discussion at the same moment. "You'll know what I mean one day, Miss Sylvia," he said darkly, "when you're married." "Silly old man!" said Sylvia, taking up the cluster of grapes for which she had come and departing in the opposite direction.
Her red-brown eyes, set wide apart, held a curious look, half indignant, half appealing. Old Jeffcott surveyed her with loving admiration. There was no one in the world to compare with Miss Sylvia in his opinion. He loved the open English courage of her, the high, inborn pride of race. Yet at the end of the survey he shook his head.
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.
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