“No, we are going to the hotel,” said Aunt Victoria.  She spoke quietly, and seemed to look as usual, but Sylvia’s inner barometer fell fast with a conviction of a change in the emotional atmosphere.  She sat as still as possible, and only once glanced up timidly at her aunt’s face.  There was no answering glance.  Aunt Victoria gazed straight in front of her.  Her face looked as it did when it was being massaged—­all smooth and empty.  There was, however, one change.  For the first time that day, she looked a little pale.

As the carriage stopped in front of the onyx-lined, palm-decorated, plate-glass-mirrored “entrance hall” of the expensive hotel, Aunt Victoria descended, motioning to Sylvia not to follow her.  “I haven’t time to drive any more this afternoon,” she said.  “Peter will take you home.  And have him bring Arnold back at once.”  She turned away and, as Sylvia sat watching her, entered the squirrel-cage revolving door of glass, which a little boy in livery spun about for her.

But after she was inside the entrance hall, she signified to him that she had forgotten something, and came immediately out again.  What she had forgotten surprised Sylvia as much as it touched her.  Aunt Victoria came rapidly to the side of the carriage and put out her arms.  “Come here, dear,” she said in a voice Sylvia had never heard her use.  It trembled a little, and broke.  With her quick responsiveness, Sylvia sprang into the outstretched arms, overcome by the other’s emotion.  She hid her face against the soft, perfumed laces and silk, and heard from beneath them the painful throb of a quickly beating heart.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith held her niece for a long moment and then turned the quivering little face up to her own grave eyes, in which Sylvia, for all her inexperience, read a real suffering.  Aunt Victoria looked as though somebody were hurting her—­hurting her awfully—­Sylvia pressed her cheek hard against her aunt’s, and Mrs. Marshall-Smith felt, soft and Warm and ardent on her lips, the indescribably fresh kiss of a child’s mouth.  “Oh, little Sylvia!” she cried, in that new, strange, uncertain voice which trembled and broke, “Oh, little Sylvia!” She seemed to be about to say something more, said in fact in a half-whisper,

“I hope—­I hope—­” but then shook her head, kissed Sylvia gently, put her back in the carriage, and again disappeared through the revolving door.

This time she did not turn back.  She did not even look back.  After a moment’s wait, Peter gathered up the reins and Sylvia, vaguely uneasy, and much moved, drove home in a solitary state, which she forgot to enjoy.