oment they were passing.

Sylvia looked, and saw obsequiously smirking upon the steps of the hotel,
with his hat lifted from his shiny head, her old enemy, Captain Barstow.
Fortunately she had not stopped. She drove quickly on, just acknowledging
his salute. It needed but this meeting to confirm her fears. It was not
coincidence which had brought Captain Barstow on their heels to Weymouth.
He had come with knowledge and a definite purpose.

"Oh, I say," protested Wallie Hine, "you might have stopped, Miss Sylvia,
and let me pass the time of day with old Barstow."

Sylvia stopped the trap at once.

"I am sorry," she said. "You will find your own way home. We lunch at
half past one."

Hine looked doubtfully at her and then back toward the hotel.

"I didn't mean that I wanted to leave you, Miss Sylvia," he said. "Not by
a long chalk."

"But you must leave me, Mr. Hine," she said, looking at him with serious
eyes, "if you want to pass the time of day with your 'red-hot' friend."

There was no hint of a smile about her lips. She waited for his answer.
It came accompanied with a smile which aimed at gallantry and was
merely familiar.

"Of course I stay where I am. What do _you_ think?"

Sylvia hurried over her shopping and drove homeward. She went at once to
her father, who lay in the hammock in the shade of the trees, reading a
book. She came up from behind him across the grass, and he was not aware
of her approach until she spoke.

"Father!" she said, and he started up.

"Oh, Sylvia!" he said, and just for a second there was a palpable
uneasiness in his manner. He had not merely started. He seemed also to
her to have been startled. But he recovered his composure.

"You see, my dear, I have been thinking of you," he said, and he pointed
to a man at work among the flower-beds. "I saw how you loved flowers,
how you liked to have the rooms bright with them. So I hired a new
gardener as a help. It is a great extravagance, Sylvia, but you are to
blame, not I."

He smiled, confident of her gratitude, and had it been but yesterday he
would have had it offered to him in full measure. To-day, however, all
her thoughts were poisoned by suspicion. She knew it and was distressed.
She knew how much happiness so simple a forethought would naturally have
brought to her. She did not indeed suspect any new peril in her father's
action. She barely looked toward the new gardener, and certainly
neglected to note whether he work