nce--experiencing a mad
impulse to fling the thing away and run off screaming to hide somewhere.

At this period of her existence Flora de Barral used to write to Mrs
Fyne not regularly but fairly often. I don't know how long she would
have gone on "conversing" and, incidentally, helping to supervise the
beautifully stocked linen closets of that well-to-do German household,
if the man of it had not developed in the intervals of his avocations
(he was a merchant and a thoroughly domesticated character) a
psychological resemblance to the Bournemouth old lady. It appeared that
he, too, wanted to be loved.

He was not, however, of a conquering temperament--a kiss-snatching,
door-bursting type of libertine. In the very act of straying from the
path of virtue he remained a respectable merchant. It would have been
perhaps better for Flora if he had been a mere brute. But he set about
his sinister enterprise in a sentimental, cautious, almost paternal
manner; and thought he would be safe with a pretty orphan. The girl for
all her experience was still too innocent, and indeed not yet
sufficiently aware of herself as a woman, to mistrust these masked
approaches. She did not see them, in fact. She thought him
sympathetic--the first expressively sympathetic person she had ever met.
She was so innocent that she could not understand the fury of the
German woman. For, as you may imagine, the wifely penetration was not
to be deceived for any great length of time--the more so that the wife
was older than the husband. The man with the peculiar cowardice of
respectability never said a word in Flora's defence. He stood by and
heard her reviled in the most abusive terms, only nodding and frowning
vaguely from time to time. It will give you the idea of the girl's
innocence when I say that at first she actually thought this storm of
indignant reproaches was caused by the discovery of her real name and
her relation to a convict. She had been sent out under an assumed
name--a highly recommended orphan of honourable parentage. Her
distress, her burning cheeks, her endeavours to express her regret for
this deception were taken for a confession of guilt. "You attempted to
bring dishonour to my home," the German woman screamed at her.

Here's a misunderstanding for you! Flora de Barral, who felt the shame
but did not believe in the guilt of her father, retorted fiercely,
"Nevertheless I am as honourable as you are." And then the