"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." "Blaming me, then," interrupted Garratt Skinner, with an easy smile. He was not at all offended. "Let us say blaming me. And it was quite natural that you should, judging by the surface. And there was nothing but the surface for you to judge by." While in this way defending Sylvia against her own self-reproach, he only succeeded in making her feel still more that she had judged hastily where she should have held all judgment in abeyance, that she had lacked faith where by right she should have shown most faith. But he wished to spare her from confusion. "I was so proud of you that I could not but suffer all the more. However, don't let us talk of it, my dear"; and waving with a gesture of the hand that little misunderstanding away forever, he resumed: