Professor Kelton had relinquished his chair in the college when Sylvia came to live with him twelve years before the beginning of this history, and had shut himself away from the world; but no one knew why.  Sylvia was the child of his only daughter, of whom no one ever spoke, though the older members of the faculty had known her, as they had known also the professor’s wife, now dead many years.  Professor Kelton had changed with the coming of Sylvia, so his old associates said; and their wives wondered that he should have undertaken the bringing-up of the child without other aid than that of the Irishwoman who had cooked his meals and taken care of the house ever since Mrs. Kelton’s death.  He was still a special lecturer at Madison, and he derived some income from the sale of his textbooks in mathematics, which he revised from time to time to bring them in touch with changing educational methods.

He had given as his reason for resigning a wish to secure leisure for writing, and he was known to suffer severely at times from the wounds that had driven him from active naval service.  But those who knew him best imagined that he bore in his breast deeper wounds than those of war.  These old friends of the college circle wondered sometimes at the strange passing of his daughter and only child, who had vanished from their sight as a girl, never to return.  They were men of quality, these teachers who had been identified with the college so long; they and their households were like a large family; and when younger men joined the faculty and inquired, or when their wives asked perfectly natural questions about Professor Kelton and Sylvia, their inquiries were met by an evasion that definitely dismissed the matter.  And out of this spirit, which marked all the social intercourse of the college folk, affection for Professor Kelton steadily increased, and its light fell upon Sylvia abundantly.  There was a particular smile for her into which much might be read; there was a tenderness manifested toward her which communicated itself to the students, who were proud to win her favor and were forever seeking little excuses for bandying words with her when they met.

The tradition of Professor Kelton’s scholarship had descended to Sylvia amusingly.  She had never attended school, but he had taught her systematically at home, and his interests were hers.  The students attributed to her the most abstruse knowledge, and stories of her precocity were repeated proudly by the Lane folk.  Many evenings spent with her grandfather at the observatory had not been wasted.  She knew the paths of the stars as she knew the walks of the campus.  Dr. Wandless, the president emeritus, addressed her always as “My Lady of the Constellations,” and told her solemnly that from much peering through the telescope she had coaxed the stars into her own eyes.  Professor Kelton and his granddaughter were thus fully identified with the college and its business, which was to impart knowledge,—­an