her had been
delicate for as long as she could remember, and it was on account
of her failing health that Sylvia had left school earlier than had
been intended, that she might be with her. Since Mrs. Ingleton's
death, three years before, she and her father had lived alone
together at the old Manor in complete accord. They had always been
close friends, the only dissension that had ever arisen between
them having been laid aside by mutual consent.

That dissension had been caused by Guy Ranger. Five years before,
when Sylvia had been only eighteen, he had flashed like a meteor
through her sky, and no other star had ever shone for her again.
Though seven years older than herself, he was little more than a
boy, full of gaiety and life, possessing an extraordinary
fascination, but wholly lacking in prospects, being no more than
the son of Squire Ingleton's bailiff.

The Rangers were people of good yeoman extraction, and Guy himself
had had a public school education, but the fact of their position
was an obstacle which the squire had found insuperable. Only his
love for his daughter had restrained him from violent measures.
But Sylvia had somehow managed to hold him, how no one ever knew,
for he was a man of fiery temper. And the end of if it had been
that Guy had been banished to join a cousin farming in South Africa
on the understanding that if he made a success of it he might
eventually return and ask Sylvia to be his wife. There was to be
no engagement between them, and if she elected to marry in the
meantime so much the better, in the squire's opinion. He had had
little doubt that Sylvia would marry when she had had time to
forget some of the poignancy of first love. But in this he had
been mistaken. Sylvia had steadfastly refused every lover who had
come her way.

He had found another billet for old Ranger, and had installed a
dour Scotchman in his place. But Sylvia still corresponded with
young Guy, still spoke of him as the man she meant to marry. It
was true she did not often speak of him, but that might have been
through lack of sympathetic listeners. There was, moreover, about
her an innate reserve which held her back where her deepest
feelings were concerned. But her father knew, and she meant him to
know, that neither time nor distance had eradicated the image of
the man she loved from her heart. The days on which his letters
reached her were always marked with a secret gladness, albeit the
l