SYLVIA MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF HER FATHER
Sylvia left Chamonix the next afternoon. It was a Saturday, and she stepped out of her railway-carriage on to the platform of Victoria Station at seven o'clock on the Sunday evening. She was tired by her long journey, and she felt rather lonely as she waited for her trunks to be passed by the officers of the custom-house. It was her very first visit to London, and there was not one person to meet her. Other travelers were being welcomed on all sides by their friends. No one in all London expected her. She doubted if she had one single acquaintance in the whole town. Her mother, foreseeing this very moment, had with a subtlety of malice refrained from so much as sending a telegram to the girl's father; and Sylvia herself, not knowing him, had kept silence too. Since he did not expect her, she thought her better plan was to see him, or rather, since her thoughts were frank, to let him see her. Her mirror had assured her that her looks would be a better introduction than a telegram.
She had her boxes placed upon a cab and drove off to Hobart Place. The sense of loneliness soon left her. She was buoyed up by excitement. The novelty of the streets amused her. Moreover, she had invented her father, clothed him with many qualities as with shining raiment, and set him high among the persons of her dreams. Would he be satisfied with his daughter? That was her fear, and with the help of the looking-glass at the side of her hansom, she tried to remove the traces of travel from her young face.
The cab stopped at a door in a narrow wall between two houses, and she got out. Over the wall she saw the green leaves and branches of a few lime trees which rose from a little garden, and at the end of the garden, in the far recess between the two side walls, the upper windows of a little neat white house. Sylvia was charmed with it. She rang the bell, and a servant came to the door.
"Is Mr. Skinner in?" asked Sylvia.
"Yes," she said, doubtfully, "but—"
Sylvia, however, had made her plans.
"Thank you," she said. She made a sign to the cabman, and walked on through the doorway into a little garden of grass with a few flowers on each side against the walls. A tiled path led through the middle of the grass to the glass door of the house. Sylvia walked straight down, followed by the cabman who brought her boxes in one after the other. The servant, giving way before the composure of this strange young visitor, opened the door of a sitting-room upon the left hand, and Sylvia, followed by her trunks, entered and took possession.
"What name shall I say?" asked the servant in perplexity. She had had no orders to expect a visitor. Sylvia paid the cabman and waited until she heard the garden door close and the jingle of the cab as it was driven away. Then, and not till then, she answered the question.
"No name. Just please tell Mr. Skinner that some one would like to see him."