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Updated: June 8, 2025
"How horrible!" murmured Sylvia, with a slight shudder as a vision of the motionless, onyx eyes which had so often watched her rose in her mind. "You're looking quite worn out," remarked Mrs. Merston. "Why did you let your husband drag you over here? You had better stay the night and have a rest." But Sylvia hastened to decline this invitation with much decision.
He went on after a moment. "I've a sort of notion that Mrs. Merston is not a person to spread contentment around her under any circumstances. If she lived in a palace at the top of the world she wouldn't be any happier." Sylvia smiled faintly at the allusion. "I don't think she has very much to make her happy," she said. It's a little hard to judge her under present conditions."
Almost immediately came an answering shout of laughter from Merston, and then his boyish yell to her. "Hi, Sylvia! How much longer are you going to keep me waiting for that precious love-letter?" She called an answer to him, dashing off final words as she did so. "I feel I am doing some good here, but if you should specially wish it, of course I will come back at any time."
"Then you are building your house on the sand," said Mrs. Merston, and turned from her with a shrug. "And great will be the fall thereof." THE visitors did not leave until the sun was well down in the west. To Sylvia it had been an inexplicably tiring day, and when they departed at length she breathed a wholly unconscious sigh of relief. "Come for a ride!" said Burke. She shook her head.
And " her eyes filled with sudden tears "that thought spoils just everything." "I see," said Burke, and though his lips were grim his voice was wholly free from harshness. "Mrs. Merston told you all about it, did she?" Sylvia's colour rose again. She turned slightly from him. "She didn't say much," she said. There was a pause. Then unexpectedly Burke's hand closed over her two clasped ones.
Sylvia went forward with an eagerness that wilted in spite of her before she reached its object. Mrs. Merston did not rise to meet her. She sat prim and upright and waited for her greeting, and Sylvia knew in a moment before their hands touched each other that here was no kindred spirit. "How do you do?" said Mrs. Merston formally.
Certainly the sky was overcast, but the clouds often came up thickly at night and dispersed again without shedding any rain. There had not been rain for months. Very grimly Matilda Merston watched the departure of her unwelcome visitor, enduring the dust that rose from his horse's hoofs with the patience of inflexible determination.
All your young freshness gone and nothing left nothing left!" She spoke with such force that Sylvia felt actually shocked. Yet still with that instinctive tact of hers, she sought to smooth the troubled waters. "Oh, have you children?" she said. "How many? Do tell me about them!" "I have had six," said Mrs. Merston dully. "They are all dead."
"Then in heaven's name, come soon!" said Merston, as he mounted his horse. When he was gone, they mounted the kopje together, still hand in hand. The way was steep, but they never rested till they reached the top. The evening light was passing, but the sky was full of stars. The spruit was a swift-flowing river below them.
Bill Merston came over in the evening, summoned by one of Burke's Kaffirs, and they buried Guy under the shadow of the kopje in what in a few more days would be a paradise of flowers. The sun was setting far away in an opalescent glow of mauve and pink and pearl. And the beauty of it went straight to Sylvia's heart.
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