She had heard a door slam violently within the house; and now
from the hall voices rose. Her father and Walter Hine were coming up
early to-night from the library, and it seemed in anger. At all events
Walter Hine was angry. His voice rang up the stairway shrill and violent.
"Why do you keep it from me? I will have it, I tell you. I am not a
child," and an oath or two garnished the sentences.
Sylvia heard her father reply with the patronage which never failed to
sting the vanity of his companion, which was the surest means to provoke
a quarrel, if a quarrel he desired.
"Go to bed, Wallie! Leave such things to Archie Parminter! You are
too young."
His voice was friendly, but a little louder than he generally used, so
that Sylvia clearly distinguished every word; so clearly indeed, that had
he wished her to hear, thus he would have spoken. She heard the two men
mount the stairs, Hine still protesting with the violence which had grown
on him of late; Garratt Skinner seeking apparently to calm him, and
apparently oblivious that every word he spoke inflamed Walter Hine the
more. She had a fear there would be blows--blows struck, of course, by
Hine. She knew the reason of the quarrel. Her father was depriving Hine
of his drug. They passed up-stairs, however, and on the landing above she
heard their doors close.
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