The warmth of her gladness had gone from her; she walked once more in shadows; there was in her voice a piteous appeal for affection, for love, of which she had had too little in her life and for which she 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 garden, rubbing the muscles of his thigh.

“You must look after Wallie, my dear,” he said.  “Age is beginning to find me out.  And after all, he will learn more of the tact and manners which he wants from you than from a rough man like me,” and it did not occur to Sylvia, who was of a natural modesty of thought, that he had any other intention of throwing them thus together than to rid himself of a guest with whom he had little in common.