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Her smile was smitten from her lips. Sylvia had a fantastic vision of her own aspect from the gaping face of horror with which her aunt for an instant reflected it. She had never before seen Aunt Victoria with an unprepared and discomposed countenance. It was another feature of the nightmare.
It was but half-past five, and Sylvia in the irritation of the moment believed that she wished Kinraid would go. But she would have been extremely disappointed if he had. Kinraid himself seemed to have no thought of the kind.
Her mother had gone down very suddenly and they had cabled at once then she grew better she had been unspeakably brave fighting the disease by sheer will-power she had conquered it she was gaining they were sorry they had cabled Sylvia she had not known she was going to die none of them had dreamed she was going to die suddenly as the worst of her disease had spent itself and the lungs were beginning to clear suddenly her heart had given way, and before the nurse could call her husband and children to her, she was gone.
"Sylvia and I have made such a discovery." Hurd nodded good-humoredly as he entered the house and shook hands with the girl. "Miss Norman has been doing some detective business on her own account," he said, smiling. "Hullo, who is this?" He made this remark, because Mrs. Purr, sitting in a corner of the room with red eyes, rose and dropped a curtsey.
"It's absurd to sit with a window tight shut in this kind of room, which is little more than a box with three people in it!" Madame Cagliostra had sunk down into her chair again. "I must beg you to go away, Mesdames," she muttered, faintly. "Five francs is all I ask of you." But Anna Wolsky was behaving in what appeared to Sylvia a very strange manner.
Colonel Reynolds, V.C., glared sternly across the table at Miss Sylvia Reynolds, and Miss Sylvia Reynolds looked in a deprecatory manner back at Colonel Reynolds, V.C.; while the dog in question a foppish pug happening to meet the colonel's eye in transit, crawled unostentatiously under the sideboard, and began to wrestle with a bad conscience.
The cat had finished her toilet, and now, springing softly to the floor, went to the door and sniffed. He knelt beside her, and unclasping the garter held it for a moment in his hands. After a while he said: "There is a name engraved upon the silver clasp beneath the buckle. It is a pretty name, Sylvia Elven. Sylvia is a woman's name, Elven is the name of a town.
'Sylvia! said he, thinking he could change his tactics, and pique her into speaking, that he would make a pretence of suspicion and offence. 'Sylvia! one would think you weren't glad to see me back again at length. I only came in late last night, and my first thought on wakening was of you; it has been ever since I left you.
"Oh, I was jest sayin' that I thought Barney was kinder set," replied her sister, mildly. "He ain't no more set than Cephas," returned Sylvia. "Cephas ain't set. It's jest his way." Sylvia sniffed. She looked scornfully at Charlotte, who had raised her head when she came in, but whose eyes were red. "Folks had better been created without ways, then," she retorted.
"Ah, but look!" He thrust before us the thing he had taken from the bag. It was that precious kodak film of Sylvia. "Look!" he cried. "You say she is near to twenty he, to seventy-five! But, more than all, I see with my lens that here is the breathing likeness of the mother! Where are your eyes, my boys? Ciel, must I tell you? She is the kidnaped princess of Azuria!"
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