The Top of the World

"Ah, Mrs. Burke, and is it yourself that I see again? Sure, and it's a very great pleasure!" Kelly, his face crimson with embarrassment and good-will, took the hand Sylvia offer...

When Sylvia started awake from that terrible dream it was to hear the tread of horses' feet outside the house and the sound of men's voices talking to each other. As she listene...

When the morning broke upon Blue Hill Farm the sand-storm had blown itself out. With brazen splendour the sun arose to burn the parched earth anew, but Sylvia was before it. Wit...

He wheeled round abruptly and stood looking at her. For a few seconds he said nothing whatever, then as with a startled sense of uncertainty she turned towards him he spoke. "Sc...

In the dark of the early morning she sat in the southward-bound train on her way to Brennerstadt, and tried to recall her first impressions. There he had stood under the lamp wa...

The flood went down in the morning, and behind it there sprang into being a new world of softest, tenderest green in place of the brown, parched desert that had been. Mary Ann s...

When Sylvia saw Guy again, he greeted her with an odd expression in his dark eyes, half-humorous, half-speculative. He was lying propped on pillows by the open window, a cigaret...

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 unco...

That night the thunder rolled among the _kopjes_, and Sylvia lay in her hut wide-awake and listening. The lightning glanced and quivered about the distant hills and threw a weir...

Donovan Kelly was out of temper. There was no denying it, though with him such a frame of mind was phenomenal. He leaned moodily against the door-post at the hotel-entrance, smo...

They breakfasted at daybreak before riding out over the lands, and their greeting was of the most commonplace description. Later, as they rode together across the barren _veldt_...

The sound of water, splashing, welling, overflowing, was everywhere. It was difficult to keep the track, but Diamond trod warily. He knew the _veldt_ by heart. Passing the _kopj...

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 _vel...

Looking back later, it almost seemed to Sylvia that the days that followed were as an interval between two acts in the play of life. It was a time of transition, though what was...

When Sylvia went to Guy a little later, she found him installed in Burke's room. Burke himself was out on the farm, but it was past the usual hour for luncheon, and she knew he...

Half-sullenly, half-aggressively, Guy Ranger flung the questions, standing with lowering brow before his captor. His head was down and his eyes raised with a peculiar, brutish e...

The commencement of the fox-hunting season was always celebrated by a dance at the Town Hall--a dance which Sylvia had never failed to attend during the five years that she had...

It was a strange friendship that developed between Sylvia and Matilda Merston during the days that followed; for they had little in common. The elder woman leaned upon the young...

They were still at breakfast when Kelly came dashing in full of the news of the death of Kieff. No one knew whether it had been accidental or intentional, but he spoke--as the g...

Some degree of normality seemed to come back into Sylvia's life with her return to Blue Hill Farm. She found plenty to do there, and she rapidly became accustomed to her surroun...

Sylvia slept that night the heavy, unstirring sleep of utter weariness though when she lay down she scarcely expected to sleep at all. The shock, the bewilderment, the crushing...

Sylvia had no desire to detain her. She longed for solitude. The thought of Guy tormented her perpetually. She ached and yearned--even while she dreaded--to see him. But Burke h...

He did not speak in answer to her exclamation, merely stood there looking at her, almost as if he had never seen her before. His eyes were keen with a sort of icy fierceness. Sh...

From the day of her visit to the Merstons Sylvia took up her old life again, and pursued all her old vocations with a vigour that seemed even more enthusiastic than of yore. Her...

"Then why isn't he?" demanded Mrs. Ingleton with asperity. "He is a rich country gentleman, and he has a position in the County. What more could you possibly want for her?"

Gilbert Ingleton bestowed a somewhat embarrassed salute upon her, one eye on his daughter. She greeted him sedately the next moment, and though her face was smiling, her welcome...

It was drawing towards evening when Sylvia at length stirred, stretched, and opened her eyes. A momentary bewilderment showed in them, then with a smile she saw and recognized h...

It was not often that Sylvia lay awake, but that night her brain was in a turmoil, and for long she courted sleep in vain. For some time after she retired, the murmur of Burke's...

Sylvia received the kiss and passed on without reply. She was very pale, but the awful inertia of the previous night had left her. She was in full command of herself. She took u...

Sylvia entered the sitting-room that day with the feeling of one returning after a prolonged absence. She had been almost too tired to notice her surroundings the previous night...

The wind went down somewhat at sunset and Sylvia realized with relief that the worst was over. She sat listening for the return of Burke and Guy while her companion chatted chee...

A dust-storm had been blowing practically all day, and the mining crowds of Brennerstadt were thirsty to a man. They congregated at every bar with the red sand thick upon them,...

She stood in the great vinery--a vivid picture against a background of clustering purple fruit. The sunset glinted on her tawny hair. Her red-brown eyes, set wide apart, held a...

When Kelly awoke that morning, it was some time later, and Burke was entering his hut with a steaming cup of cocoa. The Irishman stretched his large bulk and laughed up at his f...

Whenever in after days Sylvia looked back upon her marriage, it seemed to be wrapped in a species of hazy dream like the early mists on that far-off range of hills.

It was after that ride to Guy's hut that Sylvia began at last to regard him as connected only with that which was past. It was as if a chapter in her life had closed when she tu...

Sylvia started at the sound of a cool, detached voice as she re-entered the hotel. Two eyes, black as onyx and as expressionless, looked coldly into hers. A chill shudder ran th...

That twenty-mile ride in Burke Ranger's high cart, with a pair of skittish young horses pulling at the reins, was an experience never to be eradicated from Sylvia's memory. They...

Sylvia looked up as one emerging from a long, long dream, though she had not closed her eyes all night. The lamp was burning low, and Guy's face was in deep shadow; but she knew...

Kelly accompanied Burke when, after hurried preparation and consultation with Schafen, he finally took the rough road that wound by the _kopje_ on his way to the Merstons' farm....

Burke's words, "You'll drive him away," recurred to her again and again, and with them came a dread of intruding that finally prevailed against her original intention. He must n...

Joe, the Kaffir boy, bestirred himself to the sound of Mary Ann's shrill rating. The hour was still early, but the big _baas_ was in a hurry and wanted his boots. Joe hastened t...

When Sylvia opened her eyes again she was lying in the chair by the open window where she had waited so long the previous evening. Her first impression was that she was alone, a...

Hans Schafen met his master on the boundary of Blue Hill Farm with a drawn face. Things were going from bad to worse. The drought was killing the animals like flies. If the rain...

It was late in the afternoon when Kelly returned to Blue Hill Farm. He had been riding round Merston's lands with Burke during a great part of the day, and he was comfortably ti...

When Burke presented himself at the door of the main bungalow he found it half-open. The whirr of a sewing-machine came forth to him, but it paused in answer to his knock, and M...

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."

Was it a voice that spoke in the overwhelming silence, or was it the echo in her soul of a voice that would never speak again? Sylvia could not decide. She had sat for so long,...

She felt as if a quiet and very steady Hand had been laid upon her, checking all agitation. Calmly she bent over the bared arm he thrust forth to her. Unflinchingly she ran the...

I.--SAND OF THE DESERT II.--THE SKELETON TREE III.--THE PUNISHMENT IV.--THE EVIL THING V.--THE LAND OF BLASTED HOPES VI.--THE PARTING VII.--PIET VREIBOOM VIII.--OUT OF THE DEPTH...

I.--THE NEW ERA II.--INTO BATTLE III.--THE SEED IV.--MIRAGE V.--EVERYBODY'S FRIEND VI.--THE HERO VII.--THE NET VIII.--THE SUMMONS IX.--FOR THE SAKE OF THE OLD LOVE X.--THE BEARE...

I.--ADVICE II.--THE NEW MISTRESS III.--THE WHIP-HAND IV.--THE VICTORY V.--THE MIRACLE VI.--THE LAND OF STRANGERS VII.--THE WRONG TURNING VIII.--THE COMRADE IX.--THE ARRIVAL X.--...

I.--COMRADES II.--THE VISITORS III.--THE BARGAIN IV.--THE CAPTURE V.--THE GOOD CAUSE VI.--THE RETURN VII.--THE GUEST VIII.--THE INTERRUPTION IX.--THE ABYSS X.--THE DESIRE TO LIV...