“What name shall I say?” asked the servant in perplexity.  She had had no orders to expect a visitor.  Sylvia paid the cabman and waited until she heard the garden door close and the jingle of the cab as it was driven away.  Then, and not till then, she answered the question.

“No name.  Just please tell Mr. Skinner that some one would like to see him.”

The servant stared, but went slowly away.  Sylvia seated herself firmly upon one of the boxes.  In spite of her composed manner, her heart was beating wildly.  She heard a door open and the firm tread of a man along the passage.  Sylvia clung to her box.  After all she was in the house, she and her baggage.  The door opened and a tall broad-shouldered man, who seemed to fill the whole tiny room, came in and stared at her.  Then he saw her boxes, and he frowned in perplexity.  As he appeared to Sylvia, he was a man of about forty-five, with a handsome, deeply-lined aquiline face.  He had thick, dark brown hair, a mustache of a lighter brown and eyes of the color of hers—­a man rather lean but of an athletic build.  Sylvia watched him intently, but the only look upon his face was one of absolute astonishment.  He saw a young lady, quite unknown to him, perched upon her luggage in a sitting-room of his house.

“You wanted to see me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, getting on to her feet.  She looked at him gravely.  “I am Sylvia,” she said.

A smile, rather like her own smile, hesitated about his mouth.

“And—­

“Who is Sylvia?  What is she? 
Her trunks do not proclaim her!”

he said.  “Beyond that Sylvia has apparently come to stay, I am rather in the dark.”

“You are Mr. Garratt Skinner?”

“Yes.”

“I am your daughter Sylvia.”

“My daughter Sylvia!” he exclaimed in a daze.  Then he sat down and held his head between his hands.

“Yes, by George.  I have got a daughter Sylvia,” he said, obviously recollecting the fact with surprise.  “But you are at Chamonix.”

“I was at Chamonix yesterday.”

Garratt Skinner looked sharply at Sylvia.

“Did your mother send you to me?”

“No,” she answered.  “But she let me go.  I came of my own accord.  A letter came from you—­”

“Did you see it?” interrupted her father.  “Did she show it you?”

“No, but she gave me your address when I told her that I must come away.”

“Did she?  I think I recognize my wife in that kindly act,” he said, with a sudden bitterness.  Then he looked curiously at his daughter.

“Why did you want to come away?”

“I was unhappy.  For a long time I had been thinking over this.  I hated it all—­the people we met, the hotels we stayed at, the life altogether.  Then at Chamonix I went up a mountain.”

“Oho,” said her father, sitting up alertly.  “So you went up a mountain?  Which one?”