I tried to hear your voice
speaking again outside the Chalet de Lognan. 'What you know, that you
must do.' I warned my father that if any harm came to Walter Hine from
taking the drug again, any harm at all which I traced to my father, I
would not keep silent."
Chayne leaned back in his seat.
"You said that--to Garratt Skinner, Sylvia!" and the warmth of pride and
admiration in his voice brought the color to her cheeks and compensated
her for that bad hour. "You stood up alone and braved him out! My dear,
if I had only been there! And you never wrote to me a word of it!"
"It would only have troubled you," she answered. "It would not have
helped me to know that you were troubled!"
"And he--your father?" he asked. "How did he receive it?"
Sylvia's face grew pale, and she stared at the table-cloth as though she
could not for the moment trust her voice. Then she shuddered and said in
a low and shaking voice--so vivid was still the memory of that hour:
"I thought that I should never see you again."
She said no more. From those few words, and from the manner in which she
uttered them, Chayne had to build up the terrible scene which had taken
place between Sylvia and her father in the little back room of the house
in Hobart Place. He looked round the lighted room, listened to the ripple
of light voices, and watched the play of lively faces and bright eyes.
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