Bounded! He
assured me with intensified solemnity that he bounded; and the sight of
the short and muscular Fyne bounding gravely about the circumscribed
passages and staircases of a small, very high-class, private hotel,
would have been worth any amount of money to a man greedy of memorable
impressions. But as I looked at him, the desire of laughter at my very
lips, I asked myself: how many men could be found ready to compromise
their cherished gravity for the sake of the unimportant child of a
ruined financier with an ugly, black cloud already wreathing his head.
I didn't laugh at little Fyne. I encouraged him: "You did!--very
good... Well?"

His main thought was to save the child from some unpleasant
interference. There was a porter downstairs, page boys; some people
going away with their trunks in the passage; a railway omnibus at the
door, white-breasted waiters dodging about the entrance.

He was in time. He was at the door before she reached it in her blind
course. She did not recognise him; perhaps she did not see him. He
caught her by the arm as she ran past and, very sensibly, without trying
to check her, simply darted in with her and up the stairs, causing no
end of consternation amongst the people in his way. They scattered.
What might have been their thoughts at the spectacle of a shameless
middle-aged man abducting headlong into the upper regions of a
respectable hotel a terrified young girl obviously under age, I don't
know. And Fyne (he told me so) did not care for what people might
think. All he wanted was to reach his wife before the girl collapsed.
For a time she ran with him but at the last flight of stairs he had to
seize and half drag, half carry her to his wife. Mrs Fyne waited at
the door with her quite unmoved physiognomy and her readiness to
confront any sort of responsibility, which already characterised her,
long before she became a ruthless theorist. Relieved, his mission
accomplished, Fyne closed hastily the door of the sitting-room.

But before long both Fynes became frightened. After a period of
immobility in the arms of Mrs Fyne, the girl, who had not said a word,
tore herself out from that slightly rigid embrace. She struggled dumbly
between them, they did not know why, soundless and ghastly, till she
sank exhausted on a couch. Luckily the children were out with the two
nurses. The hotel housemaid helped Mrs Fyne to put Flora de Barral to
bed. She was as if gone spee