pelt beside the chair to which, after a day and night in Bella's bed,
she was helped.

She had a charming fashion of speech, rather slow motions of her lips,
which had some difficulty with "r" and "s," a difficulty which she
evidently struggled against conscientiously, and as she talked, she
gesticulated with her slim little hands. She was a touching thing
sitting there in Hugh's carved throne--he an abdicated monarch at
her feet, knee in hand, grizzled head tilted back, hazel eyes raised
to her and filled with adoration.

"I am called Sylvie Doone," she said with that quaint struggle over
the "S." "I was always miserable at home." She gave the quick sigh
of a child. "You see, my father died when I was very little, and then
my mother married again. We lived in the grimmest little town, hardly
more than a dozen houses, beside a stream, up in Massachusetts--farming
country, but poor farming, hard farming, the kind that twists the
men with rheumatism, and makes the women all pinched and worn. Mother
was like that. She died when I was thirteen. You see--there I was,
so queerly fixed. I had to live with Mr. Pynche--there was no other
home for me anywhere. And he kind of resented it. He had enough money
not to need me for work--a sister of his did the housework better
than I could--and yet he was poor enough to hate having to feed me
and pay for my clothes. I was always feeling in the way, and a burden.
There was nothing I could do.

"Then I saw something about the movies in a magazine, and pictures
of girls, not much better-looking than me, making lots of money. I
borrowed some money from a drug-store clerk who wanted to keep company
with me--I've paid it back--and I went to New York. I did get a job.