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.