CHAPTER III.
THE BARGAIN 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.

"No, thank you.

I think I will have a rest." "All right.

I'll smoke a pipe on the _stoep_," he said.
He had been riding round his land with Merston during the greater part of the afternoon, and it did not surprise her that he seemed to think that he also had earned a quiet evening.

But curiously his decision provoked in her an urgent desire to ride alone.