I just think that he left you, because you did not keep step either." "Oh, he left me?
Not I him?
Then why does he write to me ?" The voice was growing harder with every word.
"I suppose because he is kind"; and at that simple explanation Sylvia's mother laughed with a bitter amusement.

Sylvia sat scraping the gravel with her slipper.
"Don't do that!" cried her mother, irritably.

Then she asked suddenly a question which startled her daughter.
"Did you meet any one last night on the mountain, at the inn ?" Sylvia's face colored, but the moonlight hid the change.
"Yes," she said.
"A man ?" "Yes." "Who was it ?" "A Captain Chayne.

He was at the hotel all last week.

It was his friend who was killed on the Glacier des Nantillons." "Were you alone at the inn, you and he ?" "Yes." "Did he know your father ?" Sylvia stared at her mother.
"I don't know.