door behind him. He
called a passing cab, and, as he entered it, he said to the driver:

"Go to the London and County Bank in Victoria Street," and gaily waving
his hand to his daughter, who stood behind the window, he drove off.

At one o'clock he returned in the same high spirits. Sylvia had spent the
morning in removing the superfluous cherries and roses from her best hat
and making her frock at once more simple and more suitable to her years.
Garratt Skinner surveyed her with pride.

"Come on," he said. "I have kept the cab waiting."

For a poor man he seemed to Sylvia rather reckless. They drove to the
Savoy Hotel and lunched together in the open air underneath the glass
roof, with a bank of flowers upon one side of them and the windows of the
grill-room on the other. The day was very hot, the streets baked in an
arid glare of sunlight; a dry dust from the wood pavement powdered those
who passed by in the Strand. Here, however, in this cool and shaded place
the pair lunched happily together. Garratt Skinner had the tact not to
ask any questions of his daughter about her mother, or how they had fared
together. He talked easily of unimportant things, and pointed out from
time to time some person of note or some fashionable actress who happened
to pass in or out of the hotel. He could be good company when he chose,
and he chose on this morning. It was not until coffee was set before
them, and he had lighted a cigar, that he touched upon themselves, and
then not with any paternal tone, but rather as one comrade conferring
with another. There, indeed, was his great advantage with Sylvia. Her
mother had either disregarded her or treated her as a child. She could
not but be won by a father who laid bare his plans to her and asked for
her criticism as well as her assent. Her suspicions of yesterday died
away, or, at all events, slept so soundly that they could not have
troubled her less had they been dead.

"Sylvia," he said, "I think London in August, and in such an August, is
too hot. I don't want to see you grow pale, and for myself I haven't had
a holiday for a long time. You see there is not much temptation for a
lonely man to go away by himself."

For the second time that day he appealed to her on the ground of his
loneliness; and not in vain. She began even to feel remorseful that she
had left him to his loneliness so long. There rose up within her an
almost maternal feeling of pity for her father. She did not