“I have been a lonely man for a good many years, Sylvia,” he said, “too lonely.  I am glad the years have come to an end”; and this time he did what yesterday night he had checked himself from doing.  He stooped down and kissed her on the forehead.  Then he went from the room, took his hat, and letting himself out of the house closed the door behind him.  He called a passing cab, and, as he entered it, he said to the driver: 

“Go to the London and County Bank in Victoria Street,” and gaily waving his hand to his daughter, who stood behind the window, he drove off.

At one o’clock he returned in the same high spirits.  Sylvia had spent the morning in removing the superfluous cherries and roses from her best hat and making her frock at once more simple and more suitable to her years.  Garratt Skinner surveyed her with pride.

“Come on,” he said.  “I have kept the cab waiting.”

For a poor man he seemed to Sylvia rather reckless.  They drove to the Savoy Hotel and lunched together in the open air underneath the glass roof, with a bank of flowers upon one side of them and the windows of the grill-room on the other.  The day was very hot, the streets baked in an arid glare of sunlight; a dry dust from the wood pavement powdered those who passed by in the Strand.  Here, however, in this cool and shaded place the pair lunched happily together.  Garratt Skinner had the tact not to ask any questions of his daughter about her mother, or how they had fared together.  He talked easily of unimportant things, and pointed out from time to time some person of note or some fashionable actress who happened to pass in or out of the hotel.  He could be good company when he chose, and he chose on this morning.  It was not until coffee was set before them, and he had lighted a cigar, that he touched upon themselves, and then not with any paternal tone, but rather as one comrade conferring with another.  There, indeed, was his great advantage with Sylvia.  Her mother had either disregarded her or treated her as a child.  She could not but be won by a father who laid bare his plans to her and asked for her criticism as well as her assent.  Her suspicions of yesterday died away, or, at all events, slept so soundly that they could not have troubled her less had they been dead.

“Sylvia,” he said, “I think London in August, and in such an August, is too hot.  I don’t want to see you grow pale, and for myself I haven’t had a holiday for a long time.  You see there is not much temptation for a lonely man to go away by himself.”

For the second time that day he appealed to her on the ground of his loneliness; and not in vain.  She began even to feel remorseful that she had left him to his loneliness so long.  There rose up within her an almost maternal feeling of pity for her father.  She did not stop to think that he had never sent for her; had never indeed shown a particle of interest in her until they had met face to face.