ging you had better say so.
I don't want to interfere in a bargain I know nothing of. But I wonder
how your father will take it when he comes out--or don't you expect him
ever to come out?"

At that moment, Mrs Fyne told me she met the girl's eyes. There was
that in them which made her shut her own. She also felt as though she
would have liked to put her fingers in her ears. She restrained
herself, however; and the "plain man" passed in his appalling
versatility from sarcasm to veiled menace.

"You have--eh? Well and good. But before I go home let me ask you, my
girl, to think if by any chance you throwing us over like this won't be
rather bad for your father later on? Just think it over."

He looked at his victim with an air of cunning mystery. She jumped up
so suddenly that he started back. Mrs Fyne rose too, and even the
spell was removed from her husband. But the girl dropped again into the
chair and turned her head to look at Mrs Fyne. This time it was no
accidental meeting of fugitive glances. It was a deliberate
communication. To my question as to its nature Mrs Fyne said she did
not know. "Was it appealing?" I suggested. "No," she said. "Was it
frightened, angry, crushed, resigned?"

"No! No! Nothing of these." But it had frightened her. She
remembered it to this day. She had been ever since fancying she could
detect the lingering reflection of that look in all the girl's glances.
In the attentive, in the casual--even in the grateful glances--in the
expression of the softest moods.

"Has she her soft moods, then?" I asked with interest.

Mrs Fyne, much moved by her recollections, heeded not my inquiry. All
her mental energy was concentrated on the nature of that memorable
glance. The general tradition of mankind teaches us that glances occupy
a considerable place in the self-expression of women. Mrs Fyne was
trying honestly to give me some idea, as much perhaps to satisfy her own
uneasiness as my curiosity. She was frowning in the effort as you see
sometimes a child do (what is delightful in women is that they so often
resemble intelligent children--I mean the crustiest, the sourest, the
most battered of them do--at times). She was frowning, I say, and I was
beginning to smile faintly at her when all at once she came out with
something totally unexpected.

"It was horribly merry," she said.

I suppose she must have been satisfied by my sudden gravity because she
looked at me