"You can bring an action for
breach of promise!" she said. "I'll support you."

He made her an ironical bow. "You are more than kind," he said.
"But--I think I shall get on better for the future without your
support."

And with the words he turned on his heel and went out.

"Hateful person!" cried Mrs. Ingleton. "Gilbert, he has insulted
me! Go after him and kick him! Gilbert! How dare you?"

Ingleton was quietly but firmly impelling her back into the
boudoir. "You go and sit down!" he said. "Sit down and be quiet!
There's been enough of this."

It was the first time in her knowledge that he had ever asserted
himself. Mrs. Ingleton stared at him wildly for a second or two,
then, seeing that he was in earnest, subsided into a chair with a
burst of hysterical weeping, declaring that no one ever treated her
so brutally before.

She expected to be soothed, comforted, propitiated, but no word of
solace came. Finally she looked round with an indignant dabbing of
her tears. How dare he treat her thus? Was he quite heartless?
She began to utter a stream of reproaches, but stopped short and
gasped in incredulous disgust. He had actually--he had
actually--gone, and left her to wear her emotion out in solitude.

So overwhelming was the result of this piece of neglect, combined
with the failure of all her plans, that Mrs. Ingleton retired
forwith to bed, and remained there for the rest of the day.

CHAPTER VI

THE LAND OF STRANGERS

It had been a day of intense and brooding heat. Black clouds hung
sullenly low in the sky, and a heavy gloom obscured the face of the
earth. On each side of the railway the _veldt_ stretched for
miles, vivid green, yet strangely desolate to unaccustomed eyes.
The moving train seemed the only sign of life in all that
wilderness.

Sylvia leaned from the carriage window and gazed blankly forth.
She had hoped that Guy would meet her at Cape Town, but he had not
been there. She had come unwelcomed into this land of strangers.
But he would be at Ritzen. He had cabled a month before that he
would meet her there if he could not get to Cape Town.

And now she was nearing Ritzen. Across the mysterious desolation
she discerned its many lights. It was a city in a plain, and the
far hills mounted guard around it, but she saw them only dimly in
the failing light.

Ritzen was the nearest railway station to the farm on which Guy
worked. From here she would have to travel tw