or not
being serious. I wonder who is the serious person of us two now."

She smiled faintly and in a friendly tone, from which I concluded at
once that she did not mean to show me the girl's letter, she said that
undoubtedly the letter disclosed an understanding between Captain
Anthony and Flora de Barral.

"What understanding?" I pressed her. "An engagement is an
understanding."

"There is no engagement--not yet," she said decisively. "That letter,
Mr Marlow, is couched in very vague terms. That is why--"

I interrupted her without ceremony.

"You still hope to interfere to some purpose. Isn't it so? Yes? But
how should you have liked it if anybody had tried to interfere between
you and Mr Fyne at the time when _your_ understanding with each other
could still have been described in vague terms?"

She had a genuine movement of astonished indignation. It is with the
accent of perfect sincerity that she cried out at me:

"But it isn't at all the same thing? How can you!"

Indeed how could I! The daughter of a poet and the daughter of a
convict are not comparable in the consequences of their conduct if their
necessity may wear at times a similar aspect. Amongst these
consequences I could perceive undesirable cousins for these dear healthy
girls, and such like, possible, causes of embarrassment in the future.

"No! You can't be serious," Mrs Fyne's smouldering resentment broke
out again. "You haven't thought--"

"Oh yes, Mrs Fyne! I have thought. I am still thinking. I am even
trying to think like you."

"Mr Marlow," she said earnestly. "Believe me that I really am thinking
of my brother in all this..." I assured her that I quite believed she
was. For there is no law of nature making it impossible to think of
more than one person at a time. Then I said:

"She has told him all about herself of course."

"All about her life," assented Mrs Fyne with an air, however, of making
some mental reservation which I did not pause to investigate. "Her
life!" I repeated. "That girl must have had a mighty bad time of it."

"Horrible," Mrs Fyne admitted with a ready frankness very creditable
under the circumstances, and a warmth of tone which made me look at her
with a friendly eye. "Horrible! No! You can't imagine the sort of
vulgar people she became dependent on ... You know her father never
attempted to see her while he was still at large. After his arrest he
instructed that relative of his