greatly
craved. She stood by the door, her lips trembling and her dark eyes for a
wonder glistening with tears. She had always, even to those who knew her
to be a woman, something of the child in her appearance, which made a
plea from her lips most difficult to refuse. Now she seemed a child on
whom the world pressed heavily before her time for suffering had come;
she had so motherless a look. Even Garratt Skinner moved uncomfortably in
his chair; even that iron man was stirred.

"I, too, am sorry, Sylvia," he said, gently; "but we will make the best
of it. Between us"--and he laughed gaily, setting aside from him his
momentary compassion--"we will teach poor Wallie Hine a little geography,
won't we?"

Sylvia had no smile ready for a reply. But she bowed her head, and into
her face and her very attitude there came an expression of patience. She
turned and opened the door, and as she opened it, and stood with her back
toward her father, she said in a quiet and clear voice, "Very well," and
so passed up the stairs to her room.

It might, after all, merely be kindness in her father which had led him
to insist on Wallie Hine's visit. So she argued, and the more
persistently because she felt that the argument was thin. He could be
kind. He had been thoughtful for her during the past week in the small
attentions which appeal so much to women. Because he saw that she loved
flowers, he had engaged a new gardener for their stay; and he had shown,
in one particular instance, a quite surprising thoughtfulness for a class
of unhappy men with whom he could have had no concern, the convicts in
Portland prison. That instance remained for a long time vividly in her
mind, and at a later time she spoke of it with consequences of a
far-reaching kind. She thought then, as she thought now, only of the
kindness of her father's action, and for the first week of Hine's visit
that thought remained with her. She was on the alert, but nothing
occurred to arouse in her a suspicion. There were no cards, little wine
was drunk, and early hours were kept by the whole household. Indeed,
Garratt Skinner left entirely to his daughter the task of entertaining
his guest; and although once he led them both over the great down to
Dorchester and back, at a pace which tired his companions out, he
preferred, for the most part, to smoke his pipe in a hammock in the
garden with a novel at his side. The morning after that one expedition,
he limped out into the