“But since you are here,” he continued, “well—­I have been doing fairly well in my business lately, and I thought we might take a little holiday together, at some quiet village by the sea.  You know nothing of England.  I have been thinking it all out this morning.  There is no country more beautiful or more typical than Dorsetshire.  Besides, you were born there.  What do you say to three weeks or so in Dorsetshire?  We will stay at an hotel in Weymouth for a few days and look about for a house.”

“Father!” exclaimed Sylvia, leaning forward with shining eyes.  “It will be splendid.  Just you and I!”

“Well, not quite,” he answered, slowly; and as he saw his daughter sink back with a pucker of disappointment on her forehead, he knocked the ash off his cigar and in his turn leaned forward over the table.

“Sylvia, I want to talk to you seriously,” he said, and glanced around to make sure that no one overheard him.  “I should very much like one person to come and stay with us.”

Sylvia made no answer.  Her face was grave and very still, her eyes dwelt quietly upon him and betrayed nothing of what she thought.

“You have guessed who the one person is?”

Again Sylvia did not answer.

“Yes.  It is Wallie Hine,” he continued.

Her suspicions were stirring again from their sleep.  She waited in fear upon his words.  She looked out, through the opening at the mouth of the court into the glare of the Strand.  The bright prospect which her vivid fancies had pictured there a minute since, transforming the dusky street into fields of corn and purple heather, the omnibuses into wagons drawn by teams of great horses musical with bells, had all grown dark.  A real horror was gripping her.  But she turned her eyes quietly back upon her father’s face and waited.

“His presence will spoil our holiday a little,” Garratt Skinner continued with an easy assurance.  “You saw, no doubt, what Wallie Hine is, last night—­a weak, foolish youth, barely half-educated, awkward, with graces of neither mind nor body, and in the hands of two scoundrels.”

Sylvia started, and she leaned forward with a look of bewilderment plain to see in her dark eyes.

“Yes, that’s the truth, Sylvia.  He has come into a little money, and he is in the hands of two scoundrels who are leading him by the nose.  My poor girl,” he cried, suddenly breaking off, “you must have found yourself in very strange and disappointing company last night.  I was very sorry for you, and sorry for myself, too.  All the evening I was saying to myself, ‘I wonder what my little girl is thinking of me.’  But I couldn’t help it.  I had not the time to explain.  I had to sit quiet, knowing that you must be unhappy, certain that you must be despising me for the company I kept.”

Sylvia blushed guiltily.

“Despising you?  No, father,” she said, in a voice of apology.  “I saw how much above the rest you were.”