o Guy. "How soon ought we to start for the Merstons?" she
asked.

He paused a moment. Then, "I will let you off to-day," he said.
"We will ride out to the _kopje_ instead."

He thought she would hail this concession with relief, but she
shook her head instantly, her face deeply flushed.

"No, I think not! We will go to the Merstons--if Guy is well
enough. We really ought to go."

She baffled him completely. He turned away. "As you will," he
said. "We ought to start in two hours."

"I shall be ready," said Sylvia.

CHAPTER III

THE SEED

"Well!" said Mrs. Merston, with her thin smile. "Are you still
enjoying the Garden of Eden, Mrs. Ranger?"

Sylvia, white and tired after her ride, tried to smile in answer
and failed. "I shall be glad when the winter is over," she said.

Mrs. Merston's colourless eyes narrowed a little, taking her in.
"You don't look so blooming as you did," she remarked. "I hear you
have had Guy Ranger on your hands."

"Yes," Sylvia said, and coloured a little in spite of herself.

"What has been the matter with him?" demanded Mrs. Merston.

Sylvia hesitated, and in a moment the older woman broke into a
grating laugh.

"Oh, you needn't trouble to dress it up in polite language. I know
the malady he suffers from. But I wonder Burke would allow you to
have anything to do with it. He has a reputation for being rather
particular."

"He is particular," Sylvia said.

Somehow she could not bring herself to tell Mrs. Merston the actual
cause of Guy's illness. She did not want to talk of it. But Mrs.
Merston was difficult to silence.

"Is it true that that scoundrel Kieff has been staying at Blue Hill
Farm?" she asked next, still closely observant of her visitor's
face.

Sylvia looked at her with a touch of animation. "I wonder why
everyone calls him that," she said. "Yes, he has been with us. He
is a doctor, a very clever one. I never liked him very much, but I
often wondered what he had done to be called that."

"Oh, I only know what they say," said Mrs. Merston. "I imagine he
was in a large measure responsible for young Ranger's fall from
virtue in the first place--and that of a good many besides. He's
something of a vampire, so they say. There are plenty of them
about in this charming country."

"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 loo