nce the visitor did not want to sit down, he, Fyne,
begged him to state his business as shortly as possible. The man in
black sat down then with a faint superior smile.

He had come for the girl. His cousin had asked him in a note delivered
by a messenger to go to Brighton at once and take "his girl" over from a
gentleman named Fyne and give her house-room for a time in his family.
And there he was. His business had not allowed him to some sooner. His
business was the manufacture on a large scale of cardboard boxes. He
had two grown-up girls of his own. He had consulted his wife and so
that was all right. The girl would get a welcome in his home. His home
most likely was not what she had been used to but, etcetera, etcetera.

All the time Fyne felt subtly in that man's manner a derisive
disapproval of everything that was not lower middle class, a profound
respect for money, a mean sort of contempt for speculators that fail,
and a conceited satisfaction with his own respectable vulgarity.

With Mrs Fyne the manner of the obscure cousin of de Barral was but
little less offensive. He looked at her rather slyly but her cold,
decided demeanour impressed him. Mrs Fyne on her side was simply
appalled by the personage, but did not show it outwardly. Not even when
the man remarked with false simplicity that Florrie--her name was
Florrie wasn't it? would probably miss at first all her grand friends.
And when he was informed that the girl was in bed, not feeling well at
all he showed an unsympathetic alarm. She wasn't an invalid was she?
No. What was the matter with her then?

An extreme distaste for that respectable member of society was depicted
in Fyne's face even as he was telling me of him after all these years.
He was a specimen of precisely the class of which people like the Fynes
have the least experience; and I imagine he jarred on them painfully.
He possessed all the civic virtues in their very meanest form, and the
finishing touch was given by a low sort of consciousness he manifested
of possessing them. His industry was exemplary. He wished to catch the
earliest possible train next morning. It seems that for seven and
twenty years he had never missed being seated on his office-stool at the
factory punctually at ten o'clock every day. He listened to Mrs Fyne's
objections with undisguised impatience. Why couldn't Florrie get up and
have her breakfast at eight like other people? In his house the
brea