me to call Miss Anthony "my dear"--and even "my
poor dear." The lonely soul had no one to talk to but that not very
happy girl. The governess despised her. The housekeeper was distant in
her manner. Moreover Mrs de Barral was no foolish gossiping woman.
But she made some confidences to Miss Anthony. Such wealth was a
terrific thing to have thrust upon one she affirmed. Once she went so
far as to confess that she was dying with anxiety. Mr de Barral (so
she referred to him) had been an excellent husband and an exemplary
father but "you see my dear I have had a great experience of him. I am
sure he won't know what to do with all that money people are giving to
him to take care of for them. He's as likely as not to do something
rash. When he comes here I must have a good long serious talk with him,
like the talks we often used to have together in the good old times of
our life." And then one day a cry of anguish was wrung from her: "My
dear, he will never come here, he will never, never come!"

She was wrong. He came to the funeral, was extremely cut up, and
holding the child tightly by the hand wept bitterly at the side of the
grave. Miss Anthony, at the cost of a whole week of sneers and abuse
from the poet, saw it all with her own eyes. De Barral clung to the
child like a drowning man. He managed, though, to catch the half-past
five fast train, travelling to town alone in a reserved compartment,
with all the blinds down...

"Leaving the child?" I said interrogatively.

"Yes. Leaving--He shirked the problem. He was born that way. He had
no idea what to do with her or for that matter with anything or anybody
including himself. He bolted back to his suite of rooms in the hotel.
He was the most helpless ... She might have been left in the Priory to
the end of time had not the high-toned governess threatened to send in
her resignation. She didn't care for the child a bit, and the lonely,
gloomy Priory had got on her nerves. She wasn't going to put up with
such a life and, having just come out of some ducal family, she bullied
de Barral in a very lofty fashion. To pacify her he took a splendidly
furnished house in the most expensive part of Brighton for them, and now
and then ran down for a week-end, with a trunk full of exquisite sweets
and with his hat full of money. The governess spent it for him in extra
ducal style. She was nearly forty and harboured a secret taste for
patronising young men of