ne had no
eyes for Mr. Jarvice. He was nerving himself to refuse the proposal.

"I can't go," he blurted out, with the ungracious stubbornness of a weak
mind which fears to be over-persuaded. Afraid lest he should consent, he
refused aggressively and rudely.

Mr. Jarvice repressed an exclamation of anger. "And why?" he asked,
leaning forward on his elbows and fixing his bright, sharp eyes on Walter
Hine's face.

Walter Hine shifted uncomfortably in his chair but did not answer.

"And why can't you go?" he repeated.

"I can't tell you."

"Oh, surely," said Mr. Jarvice, with a scarcely perceptible sneer. "Come
now! Between gentlemen! Well?"

Walter Hine yielded to Jarvice's insistence.

"There's a girl," he said, with a coy and odious smile.

Mr. Jarvice beat upon his desk with his fists in a savage anger. His
carefully calculated plan was to be thwarted by a girl.

"She's a dear," cried Walter Hine. Having made the admission, he let
himself go. His vanity pricked him to lyrical flights. "She's a dear,
she's a sob, she would never let me go, she's my little girl."

Such was Sylvia's reward for engaging in a struggle which she loathed for
the salvation of Walter Hine. She was jubilantly claimed by him as his
little girl in a money-lender's office. Mr. Jarvice swore aloud.

"Who is she?" he asked, sternly.

A faint sense of shame came over Walter Hine. He dimly imagined what
Sylvia would have thought and said, and what contempt her looks would
have betrayed, had she heard him thus boast of her goodwill.

"You are asking too much, Mr. Jarvice," he said.

Mr. Jarvice waved the objection aside.

"Of course I ask it as between gentlemen," he said, with an ironical
politeness.

"Well, then, as between gentlemen," returned Walter Hine, seriously. "She
is the daughter of a great friend of mine, Mr. Garratt Skinner. What's
the matter?" he cried; and there was reason for his cry.

It had been an afternoon of surprises for Mr. Jarvice, but this simple
mention of the name of Garratt Skinner was more than a surprise. Mr.
Jarvice was positively startled. He leaned back in his chair with his
mouth open and his eyes staring at Walter Hine. The high color paled in
his face and his cheeks grew mottled. It seemed that fear as well as
surprise came to him in the knowledge that Garratt Skinner was a friend
of Walter Hine.

"What is the matter?" repeated Hine.

"It's nothing," replied Mr. Jarvice, hastily. "The heat, th