"It will
be splendid. Just you and I!"
"Well, not quite," he answered, slowly; and as he saw his daughter sink
back with a pucker of disappointment on her forehead, he knocked the ash
off his cigar and in his turn leaned forward over the table.
"Sylvia, I want to talk to you seriously," he said, and glanced around to
make sure that no one overheard him. "I should very much like one person
to come and stay with us."
Sylvia made no answer. Her face was grave and very still, her eyes dwelt
quietly upon him and betrayed nothing of what she thought.
"You have guessed who the one person is?"
Again Sylvia did not answer.
"Yes. It is Wallie Hine," he continued.
Her suspicions were stirring again from their sleep. She waited in fear
upon his words. She looked out, through the opening at the mouth of the
court into the glare of the Strand. The bright prospect which her vivid
fancies had pictured there a minute since, transforming the dusky street
into fields of corn and purple heather, the omnibuses into wagons drawn
by teams of great horses musical with bells, had all grown dark. A real
horror was gripping her. But she turned her eyes quietly back upon her
father's face and waited.
"His presence will spoil our holiday a little," Garratt Skinner continued
with an easy assurance. "You saw, no doubt, what Wallie Hine is, last
night--a weak, foolish youth, barely half-educated, awkward, with graces
of neither mind nor body, and in the hands of two scoundrels.
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