He and I parted before you were born." "But he writes to you." "Yes, he writes to me," and for all that she tried, she could not altogether keep a tone of contempt out of her voice.

She added with some cruelty: "But he never mentions you.

He has never once inquired after you, never once." Sylvia looked very wistfully at the letter, but her purpose was not shaken.
"Mother, I want to go to him," she persisted.

Her lips trembled a little, and with a choke of the voice, a sob half caught back, she added: "I am most unhappy here." The rarity of a complaint from Sylvia moved her mother strangely.

There was a forlornness, moreover, in her appealing attitude.