She knew the book by repute and was surprised to find it in her father’s hands.  She was surprised still more that he should have been at so much pains to conceal the title from her notice.  After all, what could it matter? she wondered.

Sylvia lay deep in misery that night.  Her father had failed her utterly.  All the high hopes with which she had set out from Chamonix had fallen, all the rare qualities with which her dreams had clothed him as in shining raiment must now be stripped from him.  She was not deceived.  Parminter, Barstow, Garratt Skinner—­there was one “deep fellow” in that trio, but it was neither Barstow nor Parminter.  It was her father.  She had but to set the three faces side by side in her thoughts, to remember the differences of manner, mind and character.  Garratt Skinner was the master in the conspiracy, the other two his mere servants.  It was he who to some dark end had brought Barstow down from London.  He loomed up in her thoughts as a relentless and sinister figure, unswayed by affection, yet with the power to counterfeit it, long-sighted for evil, sparing no one—­not even his daughter.  She recalled their first meeting in the little house in Hobart Place, she remembered the thoughtful voice with which, as he had looked her over, he had agreed that she might be “useful.”  She thought of his caresses, his smile of affection, his comradeship, and she shuddered.  Walter Hine’s words had informed her to-day to what use her father had designed her.  She was his decoy.

She lay upon her bed with her hands clenched, repeating the word in horror.  His decoy!  The moonlight poured through the open window, the music of the stream filled the room.  She was in the house in which she had been born, a place mystically sacred to her thoughts; and she had come to it to learn that she was her father’s decoy in a vulgar conspiracy to strip a weakling of his money.  The stream sang beneath her windows, the very stream of which the echo had ever been rippling through her dreams.  Always she had thought that it must have some particular meaning for her which would be revealed in due time.  She dwelt bitterly upon her folly.  There was no meaning in its light laughter.

In a while she was aware of a change.  There came a grayness in the room.  The moonlight had lost its white brilliance, the night was waning.  Sylvia rose from her bed, and slowly like one very tired she began to gather together and pack into a bag such few clothes as she could carry.  She had made up her mind to go, and to go silently before the house waked.  Whither she was to go, and what she was to do once she had gone, she could not think.  She asked herself the questions in vain, feeling very lonely and very helpless as she moved softly about the room by the light of her candle.  Her friend might write to her and she would not receive his letter.  Still she must go.  Once or twice she stopped her work, and crouching down upon the bed allowed her tears to have their way.  When she had finished her preparations she blew out her candle, and leaning upon the sill of the open window, gave her face to the cool night air.