life--under a harsh, unconcerned sky dried by the wind to
a clear blue. It had been raining during the night. The sunshine
itself seemed poor. From time to time a few bits of paper, a little
dust and straw whirled past us on the broad flat promontory of the
pavement before the rounded front of the hotel.

Flora de Barral was silent for a while. I said:

"And next day you thought better of it."

Again she raised her eyes to mine with that peculiar expression of
informed innocence; and again her white cheeks took on the faintest
tinge of pink--the merest shadow of a blush.

"Next day," she uttered distinctly, "I didn't think. I remembered.
That was enough. I remembered what I should never have forgotten.
Never. And Captain Anthony arrived at the cottage in the evening."

"Ah yes. Captain Anthony," I murmured. And she repeated also in a
murmur, "Yes! Captain Anthony." The faint flush of warm life left her
face. I subdued my voice still more and not looking at her: "You found
him sympathetic?" I ventured.

Her long dark lashes went down a little with an air of calculated
discretion. At least so it seemed to me. And yet no one could say that
I was inimical to that girl. But there you are! Explain it as you may,
in this world the friendless, like the poor, are always a little
suspect, as if honesty and delicacy were only possible to the privileged
few.

"Why do you ask?" she said after a time, raising her eyes suddenly to
mine in an effect of candour which on the same principle (of the
disinherited not being to be trusted) might have been judged equivocal.

"If you mean what right I have..." She moved slightly a hand in a worn
brown glove as much as to say she could not question anyone's right
against such an outcast as herself.

I ought to have been moved perhaps; but I only noted the total absence
of humility.--"No right at all," I continued, "but just interest. Mrs
Fyne--it's too difficult to explain how it came about--has talked to me
of you--well--extensively."

No doubt Mrs Fyne had told me the truth, Flora said brusquely with an
unexpected hoarseness of tone. This very dress she was wearing had been
given her by Mrs Fyne. Of course I looked at it. It could not have
been a recent gift. Close-fitting and black, with heliotrope silk
facings under a figured net, it looked far from new, just on this side
of shabbiness; in fact, it accentuated the slightness of her figure, it
went well in