He paid his bill, and taking his hat, sauntered out
into the Strand. The carelessness which had left
the check underneath the hearth-rug was not, however,
the only bad break made in connection with this affair.
At a certain moment during luncheon Garratt Skinner
had unwisely smiled and had not quite concealed the
smile with his hand. Against her every wish,
that smile forced itself upon Sylvia’s recollections
as she drove home. She tried to interpret it
in every pleasant sense, but it kept its true character
in her thoughts, try as she might. It remained
vividly a very hateful thing—the smile
of the man who had gulled her.
THE HOUSE OF THE RUNNING WATER
A week later, on a sunlit afternoon, Sylvia and her
father drove northward out of Weymouth between the
marshes and the bay. Sylvia was silent and looked
about her with expectant eyes.
“I have been lucky, Sylvia,” her father
had said to her. “I have secured for our
summer holiday the very house in which you were born.
It cost me some trouble, but I was determined to get
it if I could, for I had an idea that you would be
pleased. However, you are not to see it until
it is quite ready.”
There was a prettiness and a delicacy in this thought
which greatly appealed to Sylvia. He had spoken
it with a smile of tenderness. Affection, surely,
could alone have prompted it; and she thanked him very
gratefully. They were now upon their way to take
possession. A little white house set back under
a hill and looking out across the bay from a thick
cluster of trees caught Sylvia’s eye. Was
that the house, she wondered? The carriage turned
inland and passed the white house, and half a mile
further on turned again eastward along the road to
Wareham, following the valley, which runs parallel
to the sea. They ascended the long steep hill
which climbs to Osmington, until upon their left hand
a narrow road branched off between hawthorn hedges
to the downs. The road dipped to a little hollow
and in the hollow a little village nestled. A
row of deep-thatched white cottages with leaded window-panes
opened on to a causeway of stone flags which was bordered
with purple phlox and raised above the level of the
road. Farther on, the roof of a mill rose high
among trees, and an open space showed to Sylvia the
black massive wheel against the yellow wall.
And then the carriage stopped at a house on the left-hand
side, and Garratt Skinner got out.
“Here we are,” he said.
It was a small square house of the Georgian days,
built of old brick, duskily red. You entered
it at the side and the big level windows of the living
rooms looked out upon a wide and high-walled garden
whence a little door under a brick archway in the
wall gave a second entrance on to the road. Into
this garden Sylvia wandered. If she had met with
but few people who matched the delicate company of
