e hills and the noise of the town, for a murmur of voices
was audible from this and that point, and under the shadows of the trees
could be seen the glimmer of light-colored frocks and the glow of cigars
waxing and waning. A waiter came across the garden with some letters for
Mrs. Thesiger. There were none for Sylvia and she was used to none, for
she had no girl friends, and though at times men wrote her letters she
did not answer them.

A lamp burned near at hand. Mrs. Thesiger opened her letters and read
them. She threw them on to the table when she had read them through.
But there was one which angered her, and replacing it in its envelope,
she tossed it so petulantly aside that it slid off the iron table and
fell at Sylvia's feet. Sylvia stooped and picked it up. It had fallen
face upward.

"This is from my father."

Mrs. Thesiger looked up startled. It was the first time that Sylvia had
ever spoken of him to her. A wariness come into her eyes.

"Well?" she asked.

"I want to go to him."

Sylvia spoke very simply and gently, looking straight into her mother's
face with that perplexing steadiness of gaze which told so very little of
what thoughts were busy behind it. Her mother turned her face aside. She
was rather frightened. For a while she made no reply at all, but her face
beneath its paint looked haggard and old in the white light, and she
raised her hand to her heart. When she did speak, her voice shook.

"You have never seen your father. He has never seen you. He and I parted
before you were born."

"But he writes to you."

"Yes, he writes to me," and for all that she tried, she could not
altogether keep a tone of contempt out of her voice. She added with some
cruelty: "But he never mentions you. He has never once inquired after
you, never once."

Sylvia looked very wistfully at the letter, but her purpose was
not shaken.

"Mother, I want to go to him," she persisted. Her lips trembled a little,
and with a choke of the voice, a sob half caught back, she added: "I am
most unhappy here."

The rarity of a complaint from Sylvia moved her mother strangely. There
was a forlornness, moreover, in her appealing attitude. Just for a moment
Mrs. Thesiger began to think of early days of which the memory was at
once a pain and a reproach. A certain little village underneath the great
White Horse on the Dorsetshire Downs rose with a disturbing vividness
before her eyes. She almost heard the mill stream babbl