“But you must leave me, Mr. Hine,” she said, looking at him with serious eyes, “if you want to pass the time of day with your ‘red-hot’ friend.”

There was no hint of a smile about her lips.  She waited for his answer.  It came accompanied with a smile which aimed at gallantry and was merely familiar.

“Of course I stay where I am.  What do you think?”

Sylvia hurried over her shopping and drove homeward.  She went at once to her father, who lay in the hammock in the shade of the trees, reading a book.  She came up from behind him across the grass, and he was not aware of her approach until she spoke.

“Father!” she said, and he started up.

“Oh, Sylvia!” he said, and just for a second there was a palpable uneasiness in his manner.  He had not merely started.  He seemed also to her to have been startled.  But he recovered his composure.

“You see, my dear, I have been thinking of you,” he said, and he pointed to a man at work among the flower-beds.  “I saw how you loved flowers, how you liked to have the rooms bright with them.  So I hired a new gardener as a help.  It is a great extravagance, Sylvia, but you are to blame, not I.”

He smiled, confident of her gratitude, and had it been but yesterday he would have had it offered to him in full measure.  To-day, however, all her thoughts were poisoned by suspicion.  She knew it and was distressed.  She knew how much happiness so simple a forethought would naturally have brought to her.  She did not indeed suspect any new peril in her father’s action.  She barely looked toward the new gardener, and certainly neglected to note whether he worked skilfully or no.  But the fears of the morning modified her thanks.  Moreover the momentary uneasiness of her father had not escaped her notice and she was wondering upon its cause.

“Father,” she resumed, “I saw Captain Barstow in Weymouth this morning.”

Though her eyes were on his face, and perhaps because her eyes were resting there with so quiet a watchfulness, she could detect no self-betrayal now.  Garratt Skinner stared at her in pure astonishment.  Then the astonishment gave place to annoyance.

“Barstow!” he said angrily.  He lay back in the hammock, looking up to the boughs overhead, his face wrinkled and perplexed.  “He has found us out and followed us, Sylvia.  I would not have had it happen for worlds.  Did he see you?”

“Yes.”

“And I thought that here, at all events, we were safe from him.  I wonder how he found us out!  Bribed the caretaker in Hobart Place, I suppose.”

Sylvia did not accept this suggestion.  She sat down upon a chair in a disconcerting silence, and waited.  Garratt Skinner crossed his arms behind his head and deliberated.

“Barstow’s a deep fellow, Sylvia,” he said.  “I am afraid of him.”