obtained it in
sufficient quantity, withheld it at times, gave it at other times, played
with him, tantalized him, gratified him. You can understand there was
only one possible result. Walter Hine became my father's slave, his dog.
I no longer counted in his thoughts at all. I was nothing."

"Yes," said Chayne.

The device was subtle, diabolically subtle. But he wondered whether it
was only to counterbalance and destroy Sylvia's influence that Garratt
Skinner had introduced cocaine to Hine's notice; whether he had not had
in view some other end, even still more sinister.

"I saw very little of Mr. Hine after our return to London," she
continued. "He did not come often to the house, but when he did come,
each time I saw that he had changed. He had grown nervous and violent of
temper. Even before we left Dorsetshire the violence had become
noticeable."

"Oh!" said Chayne, looking quickly at Sylvia. "Before you left
Dorsetshire?"

"Yes; and my father seemed to me to provoke it, though I could not guess
why. For instance--"

"Yes?" said Chayne. "Tell me!"

He spoke quietly enough, but once again there was audible a certain
intensity in his voice. There had been an occasion when Sylvia had given
to him more news of Garratt Skinner than she had herself. Was she to do
so once more? He leaned forward with his eyes on hers.

"The night when you came back to me. Do you remember, Hilary?" and a
smile lightened his face.

"I shall forget no moment of that night, sweetheart, while I live," he
whispered; and blushes swept prettily over her face, and in a sweet
confusion she smiled back at him.

"Oh, Hilary!" she said.

"Oh, Sylvia!" he mimicked; and as they laughed together, it seemed there
was a danger that the story of the months of separation would never be
completed. But Chayne brought her back to it.

"Well? On that night when I came back?"

"I saw you in the road from my window, and then motioning you to be
silent, I disappeared from the window."

"Yes, I remember," said Chayne, eagerly. He began to think that the
cocaine was after all going to fit in with the incidents of that night.

"Walter Hine and my father were going up to bed. I heard them on the
stairs. They were going earlier than usual."

"You are sure?" interrupted Chayne. "Think well!"

"Much earlier than usual, and they were quarreling. At least, Walter Hine
was quarreling; and my father was speaking to him as if he were a child.
That hurt h