She and Burke seldom spoke of him when together. That intangible reserve that had grown up between them seemed to make it impossible. She had no longer the faintest idea as to Burke's opinion of the returned prodigal, whether he still entertained his previous conviction that Guy was beyond help, or whether he had begun at length to have any confidence for the future. In a vague fashion his reticence hurt her, but she could not bring herself to attempt to break through it. He was a man perpetually watching for something, and it made her uneasy and doubtful, though for what he watched she had no notion. For it was upon herself rather than upon Guy that his attention seemed to be concentrated. His attitude puzzled her. She felt curiously like a prisoner, though to neither word, nor look, nor deed could she ascribe the feeling. She was even at times disposed to put it down to the effect of the weather upon her physically. It did undoubtedly try her very severely. Though the exercise that she compelled herself to take had restored to her the power to sleep, she always felt as weary when she arose as when she lay down. The heat and the drought combined to wear her out. Valiantly though she struggled to rally her flagging energies, the effort became increasingly difficult. She lived in the depths of a great depression, against which, strive as she might, she ever strove in vain. She was furious with herself for her failure, but it pursued her relentlessly. She found the Kaffir servants more than usually idle and difficult to deal with, and this added yet further to the burden that weighed her down. One day, returning from a ride to find Fair Rosamond swabbing the floor of the _stoep_ with her bath-sponge, she lost her temper completely and wholly unexpectedly, and cut the girl across her naked shoulders with her riding-switch. It was done in a moment--a single, desperate moment of unbearable exasperation. Rosamond screamed and fled, upsetting her pail inadvertently over her mistress's feet as she went. And Sylvia, with a burning sense of shame for her violence, retreated as precipitately to her own room. She entered by the window, and, not even noticing that the door into the sitting-room stood ajar, flung herself down by the table in a convulsion of tears. She hated herself for her action, she hated Rosamond for having been the cause of it. She hated the blazing sky and the parched earth, the barren _veldt_, the imprisoning _kopjes_, the hopeless sense of oppression, of being always somehow in the wrong. A wild longing to escape was upon her, to go anywhere--anywhere, so long as she could get right away from that intolerable weight of misgiving, doubt, dissatisfaction, foreboding, that hung like a galling chain upon her.