Mrs. Thesiger, however, was to hear more definitely of that message two days later.  It was after dinner.  She was sitting in the garden with her daughter on a night of moonlight; behind them rose the wall of mountains, silent and shadowed, in front were the lights of the little town, and the clatter of its crowded streets.  Between the town and the mountains, at the side of the hotel this garden lay, a garden of grass and trees, where the moonlight slept in white brilliant pools of light, or dripped between the leaves of the branches.  It partook alike of the silence of the hills and the noise of the town, for a murmur of voices was audible from this and that point, and under the shadows of the trees could be seen the glimmer of light-colored frocks and the glow of cigars waxing and waning.  A waiter came across the garden with some letters for Mrs. Thesiger.  There were none for Sylvia and she was used to none, for she had no girl friends, and though at times men wrote her letters she did not answer them.

A lamp burned near at hand.  Mrs. Thesiger opened her letters and read them.  She threw them on to the table when she had read them through.  But there was one which angered her, and replacing it in its envelope, she tossed it so petulantly aside that it slid off the iron table and fell at Sylvia’s feet.  Sylvia stooped and picked it up.  It had fallen face upward.

“This is from my father.”

Mrs. Thesiger looked up startled.  It was the first time that Sylvia had ever spoken of him to her.  A wariness come into her eyes.

“Well?” she asked.

“I want to go to him.”

Sylvia spoke very simply and gently, looking straight into her mother’s face with that perplexing steadiness of gaze which told so very little of what thoughts were busy behind it.  Her mother turned her face aside.  She was rather frightened.  For a while she made no reply at all, but her face beneath its paint looked haggard and old in the white light, and she raised her hand to her heart.  When she did speak, her voice shook.

“You have never seen your father.  He has never seen you.  He and I parted before you were born.”

“But he writes to you.”

“Yes, he writes to me,” and for all that she tried, she could not altogether keep a tone of contempt out of her voice.  She added with some cruelty:  “But he never mentions you.  He has never once inquired after you, never once.”

Sylvia looked very wistfully at the letter, but her purpose was not shaken.

“Mother, I want to go to him,” she persisted.  Her lips trembled a little, and with a choke of the voice, a sob half caught back, she added:  “I am most unhappy here.”