ears.  She listened for the sound of some one else moving in the room below, some one who had been left behind.  She listened for a creak of the stairs, the brushing of a coat against the stair rail, the sound of some one going stealthily to his room.  She stood at the door, with her face strangely set for a long while.  Her mind was quite made up.  If she heard her father moving from that room, she would just wait until he was asleep, and then she would go—­anywhere.  She could not go back to her mother, that she knew.  She had no one to go to; nevertheless, she would go.

But no sound reached her.  Her father was not in the room below.  He must have gone to bed and left the others to themselves.  The pigeon had been plucked that night, not a doubt of it, but her father had had no hand in the plucking.  She laid herself down upon her bed, exhausted, and again sleep came to her.  And in a moment the sound of running water was in her ears.

CHAPTER XI

SYLVIA’S FATHER MAKES A MISTAKE

Sylvia did not wake again until the maid brought in her tea and told her that it was eight o’clock.  When she went down-stairs, her father was already in the dining-room.  She scanned him closely, but his face bore no sign whatever of a late and tempestuous night; and a great relief enheartened her.  He met her with an open smile.

“Did you sleep well, Sylvia?”

“Not very well, father,” she answered, as she watched his face.  “I woke up in the early morning.”

But nothing could have been more easy or natural than his comment on her words.

“Yet you look like a good sleeper.  A strange house, I suppose, Sylvia.”

“Voices in the strange house,” she answered.

“Voices?”

Garratt Skinner’s face darkened.

“Did those fellows stay so late?” he asked with annoyance.  “What time was it when they woke you up, Sylvia?”

“A little before five.”

Garratt Skinner’s annoyance increased.

“That’s too bad,” he cried.  “I left them and went to bed.  But they promised me faithfully only to stay another half-hour.  I am very sorry, Sylvia.”  And as she poured out the tea, he continued:  “I will speak pretty sharply to Barstow.  It’s altogether too bad.”

Garratt Skinner breakfasted with an eye on the clock, and as soon as the hands pointed to five minutes to nine, he rose from the table.

“I must be off—­business, my dear.”  He came round the table to her and gently laid a hand upon her shoulder.  “It makes a great difference, Sylvia, to have a daughter, fresh and young and pretty, sitting opposite to me at the breakfast table—­a very great difference.  I shall cut work early to-day on account of it; I’ll come home and fetch you, and we’ll go out and lunch somewhere together.”

He spoke with every sign of genuine feeling; and Sylvia, looking up into his face, was moved by what he said.  He smiled down at her, with her own winning smile; he looked her in the face with her own frankness, her own good humor.